I’m sitting on a curb by the tire shop door

Number in my pocket like a train running slow

Air smells like rubber and roasted almonds

Carts knocking soft where the concrete seams go

Big open doorway, people pouring through

Like a river that forgot what it came to do

And they scatter like ants from a cardboard hill

Each one carrying what they couldn’t leave still

Paper towels rise like apartment blocks

Oranges glowing in mesh bag socks

Forty-pound rice and a watermelon round

Little planets rolling quietly through town

I start counting things just to pass the day

One pineapple rolling away

Two big boxes of strawberries bright

Three rotisserie chickens warm and tight

Four giant muffins under plastic domes

Five paper towel towers heading home

And they scatter like ants from a cardboard hill

Each one carrying what they couldn’t leave still

Laundry soap jugs and avocados green

Bananas swinging from the cart’s front beam

Marching their treasure back out to their cars

Like they struck a vein in the warehouse bazaar

A man with enough grapes to feed half a street

A woman with tulips and twelve pounds of meat

A kid counting cookies through plastic and air

Like numbers might make them multiply there

My number lights up on the board by the bay

The mechanic waves once like he’s clearing the way

Fresh rubber humming where the old one gave out

I roll through the lot on the slow way out

Still scattering like ants from a cardboard hill

Each one carrying what they couldn’t leave still

While I drift past the curb in the late afternoon

On four brand-new tires and a half-written tune

’Bout the parade by the door and the way people are

Counting their fortunes in Costco carts