The Mystery of Shopping Carts

Who knows why shopping carts
gravitate into alleyways,
hump curbs, luxuriate
in rain, and rust to
burnished sandstone shades.

I’ve seen them dance
to inner-city gridlock madrigals —
frantic partners of vagabonds,
suburban leaves evicted
from row-house boulevard trees.

I’ve observed their bent bars,
sensual in sunlit waltzes
with chickadees, playmate
to summer-stained children,
last confidant of the dying homeless.