When I’m in a Walt Whitman state of mind I want to hug every new mother I see wheeling a sleeping infant in a stroller, a boy on a skateboard whose body jumps past every pothole in the pavement, seniors who walk around the lake in baseball caps; there’s a man in a wheelchair shouting curses at anyone who’ll listen, but no one does, another man who balances on a bicycle filled with recycled cans, young girls on roller skates hi-fiving their friends, kids with charms attached to backpacks like bushy yellow tails, a red bottle brush washes the sky, a Bird of Paradise bows its split head open, there are ravens in the city flying past all the light sleepers and all the all-nighters with the same cry in one mutable moment, as broken mirrors piled beneath cars on either side of the sidewalk reflect the places time takes us through a littering of lives, and then I know. A woman in a green dress walks past me, her heart a retablo beating on view. As shocking as it is to watch it contract and release in the open air, she covers the muscle with one hand and flies away.