MORALS IN THE MORNING

I was on my way to the office today through the cold city morning where all was gray and misty in the stone and glass canyons filling with the day's noise; empty-windowed buildings closed up tight behind shuttered doors only now beginning to screech open; the sun aslant, peeking in undecided— in short, a time for moral misgivings, jettisoned scruples, uncertainties of every stripe— when out of the raucous mist there came an elder man, leaning on a cane, who tottered up to a couple of those big-eyed, lustbright porn stickers the nightslime glue to everything along the streets (to be found by others awash in the ebb tides of darkness), pulled them from the street sign pole to which they were stuck at eye height (atop the glue of a thousand previous stickers), tore them into pieces and threw them right there on the ground, then tottered on, a living Don Quixote making his daily morning rounds. Good for you, elderfellow.