At recess, the children serve make-believe
lunch on heart-shaped leaves.
In colored chalk, on the sidewalk,
Aleesha draws her, the long friend
who walks Grand River in an Egyptian wind.
Her ropy arms stretch out
like the limbs of the dusty lilac in the schoolyard.
She will come, the rescuer in African robes
who measures the distances.
She will do the stars with you.
She will sprig your buttonhole
when the dry shadows try for you.
She roams the killing alleys unharmed.
She waits at the good south door of the hard kitchens.
She stands in the playground beside each child,
watching the ball bounce off a naked rim.
She walks the tracks where they found the body.
She searches along two rivers for the city’s true name.
And calling the unlucky and the inheritors,
she looks for light lost from a golden wheel.