Sunday morning

Standing at the window,
I let fall a book of American sermons

when I see my neighbor
washing his Honda in the June sunshine

and across the street,
an old woman catechizing her roses.

On the radio
a disk jockey affirms his faith in Virgin Records,

though he himself is a separatist
who mostly worships at independent shrines.

I switch stations to hear
a scholar trying to describe the color purple:

it cannot be done, he finally admits,
though he calls it the existential center.

Carrying flatbread and coffee,
I abandon the house

for the sidewalk, where a block away
two kids are playing with a garden sprinkler.

They dance in rainbows,
free, it seems, of all catastrophe.