When I look over my shoulder

to change lanes on

the Leo Frigo bridge

high above the bay, I see her 

reaching over to smooth his long hair –

my son’s girlfriend –

and it’s as though he’s been

cracked open and I’ve seen

his heart beating

for the first time.

It’s crowded, so 

we park far

from the market grounds

this muggy August night

and we take our time on the

uneven sidewalks, overgrown by

late summer weeds.

Neighborhood kids on Big Wheels or bikes

circle elderly men on canes,

dodge parents carrying chairs and coolers

in the slowly fading light.

They walk behind me, holding hands –

her hands are cold, she says,

and holds them up to his heart.

The waffled orange plastic fence

runs between Titletown Brewery

and the Fox river that flows north,

parallel to the railroad tracks where

uneven piles of fresh gravel and asphalt wait patiently

for the future coming through –

we pick our way past the recycle bin

and a family struggling with a wagon.

I give my charges $10 and set them free.

On the periphery,

the hot air balloons groggily lift their outsize heads

as though waking from a late-afternoon nap

they don’t recall taking.

Their narrow necks fill with heartburn and fire and

soon a sentinel of them line the riverfront,

alternating light and dark against the purple sky.

Though it is late, I feel reckless –

I buy cold brew coffee

from a couple in a pull-behind trailer,

white trimmed in teal. Benjamin Brewer.

I pay $1 to pet a white puppy

from Lucky 7 Dog rescue.

I take a card.

I run into my cousin who’s just gotten a text from my aunt:

“We’re by the pole dancers.” Sure enough,

they are.

Her brother is wearing a hat

like one that I imagine Fitzgerald wore

to write about Daisy –

he punches out staccato poems on the spot

on an old typewriter

for young women in pairs,

for families with kids,

all standing in line and waiting for

enlightenment.

His chalkboard signs says:

Poems. Any topic.  While you wait. Pay whatever.

I wave at him and smile

but he is hunched over his work, and

I keep walking.

The hot air balloons

that have been taking Midwestern turns

lighting up, one after another,

slowly topple sideways,

darken,

deflate.

Silhouette people

wait to fold them,

tuck them onto trailers,

and drive them away in darkness.

I walk under the lights

strung over the picnic tables

to listen to the band all the way from Portland-

a marching band

drenched in New Orleans voodoo and

blended with Village People who do Cross Fit,

who make their own t-shirts,

who maybe practice polyamory.

They are jubilant,

they have trumpets, drums, a slide trombone,

hula hoops.

I buy a t-shirt I don’t need.

My son and his girlfriend

reappear,

and the music

fades

and then grows again

as we walk backward through the vendors to the the exit

(“Everlasting Romance”! Henna! Goat Milk Soap!)

then back up the street.

Along the old Larsen cannery

under the streetlights,

weeds grow wild and tall

between the sidewalk and wall,

and I say they are impressive,

ambitious,

and she says she’s never heard weeds

described that way, and so I say

they are profligate,

desperate,

ambidextrous,

hopeful,

senescent,

weedy.

You should write a poem about that,

my son says. But

I am not thinking

of adjectives for weeds,

I am picking my way

through the darkness and

watching the way that

people move about in their houses

lit by TVs and kitchen sink lights and soft table lamps –

I am thinking that

this night

is a window lit

for a brief moment,

and that years and years from now

I will walk past it in the darkness

and see

what was

inside.