Commuting

6:50 am

Last night I rode the bus home and thought --

so dark and yet

so early, only 4:47 pm and already someone has pricked the skin

of the balloon of the sky and the light

has gone rushing out like air and the city

of San Francisco, Coit Tower, the TransAmerica pyramid, the Embarcadero Center

and all the blocky fortresses of capital with bay views

are zipping up their suits of silhouette.

But now the risen bits of sun are pooling on the bay's rim

and spilling out beneath the stuttering bits of cloud

and filling in the gaps between the interlocking fingers of highway on the east end of the Bay Bridge

where the 80 and the 880 and the 580 loop and ribbon

and a light that is one of the colors of the scarf I'm knitting with yarn remaining from a hat

edges up and over to shade the clouds on the other side of the Bridge

and I wonder whether this patchwork of vapor, this fragmented fog

always hanging over us is a mirror

or a screen.