Spike is Best

Panhandling is illegal and unsafe
where the plantain and pineapple weeds
breach asphalt shield and marathon their seeds
along the traffic-flanked meridian.
Wheels-a-hundred-thousand blow them dust
for root bed - thin reserve, a fractional crust
to shimmy out their four-lane prophecy
against all skin-flint greed, ambition, lust:
not even Solomon was arrayed as these
that float white stars around tiaras
or nestle yellow orbs in frilly hair
and at the tonnage truck-by make ballet.
Obdurate man of the waiting red
with a cardboard square that pleads
noon clemence on cooking cement,
that a hand outdo the weeds at least
and give him coin like dandelion snow:
if such perfect spheres shatter at a winnow,
to drift up and down a hillock till they catch
and put past grass a taproot down, home-locked
a few dolphin undulations away
from where it hover-toed on parent stalk;
or as a sheepy herd all ankle-silent,
nakedly sail over blinding sidewalk
lowest rung language into the ear of earth
at the next open fissure or tree bed doughnut
joining generations, annum per annum,
then what for chump-change dumb in one's console,
to dress him with the least we know,
to bless him with a coffee and a bagel
or stay sealed in an air-conditioned bubble
at bay, windows rolled, a spectator grave,
respecting the new-placed sign that reads:
panhandling is illegal and unsafe.