The Storm of the Eye

You passed me on the sidewalk yesterday
among squirrel chirps and cardinals and blue jays
               and mourning doves and house cats crouched in wait.
               To see you was like passing through a gate

of wrought-iron curls tangled in creeping vines
too quiet and too still for human-kind.
               I walked into an Escher wheel and saw
               the sky upturn, the paths enfold and fall

into the storm I witnessed in your eyes,
               you smiling stranger! Man who walks his dog!
I feel the wind pick up. I terrorize
               myself with prophecies, turn like a cog.