Mammoth on the Metro Mall

I hear heels behind me
playing red cobbles
on the Metro Mall,
hard heels in a hurry,
four, five pair of
clattering castanets,
and it's not so much
the lack of synchronicity, 
the unmanly pandemonium,
but the pace,
the quick and robotic click
of heel succeeding heel
that makes me think
I must seem like
some old mammoth
plodding through a bog,
a caveman, to be certain.
I push up a sleeve
on my Einstein sweat shirt.
Closer now,
a dozen yoked
behind me.
If I weren't a mechanic,
I might be frightened, and
yet, I couldn't block their way
if I wanted to,
so I draw in my shoulders,
and they pass on either side,
burst into the vision like a dream,
and look how pretty they are!
Coiffed and made-up, suited,
important, metropolitan,
energetic, athletic,
intelligent...
I light a cigarette,
scratch the beard:
Fare-thee-well!
Fare-thee-well, ladies!


(Arkansas Magazine, Arkansas Democrat, January 4, 1987)