The Midnight Show in Oakland

The cold moon hovers above Oakland. Hubcaps sparkle in retrograde. “Bakery” buzzes and glows in neon pink. The bakery curves around the corner of Broadway and 45th, all windows, like in Hopper’s Nighthawks. The kid in skinny jeans texts while turning a stool upside down with the free hand. Another stool. And another, placing them on the bar where Hopper’s lovely, if bored, red-head would be, and the gentlemen with fedoras.

The moon hovers above The Bay. Down here with me and the wind, a Lays-potato-chips bag cartwheels, shining yellow in the lamp-light. A forklift heaves crates of oranges, jerkily shifting to find clearance into the warehouse as men call out to guide the driver. A cyclist stands to push through the light. Spokes whir in the still air.

A girl in a red scoop-neck dress, just off work, snatches the plastic from her cigarettes and packs them, smack smack ricocheting off the alley-walls that swirl with graffiti. She exhales.

At the end of the street, as if a beacon, a great Palm towers in the indigo night. The moon, cold and yellow, rises and follows me down that street — passes me up, floating out over the Bay as I stop to let the bus shoot through, an emerald flash, carrying sleepy bodies.

The cold moon hovers over Oakland.