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So much Mississippi river, giant and dingy, its last few barges lurching up and down it, one log floating upright at the pace of a human walker walking.  The birds make figure eights above it, as if each has worked it out ahead of time to stay in a space on a grid. Also, the once giant city now not so giant, a city after its hey-day as a city, everything a monument or boosterism, pedestrians carrying washcloths and wiping their heat wet faces, handing their transfers to each other, and all the heat wet faces, sweat , everywhere, no one doing much talking in the once great city now not so great, tourists here and there  on carriages and river cruises, horses stopping to piss, small high-ceilinged shops with slender people in slender jeans eating gelato and crepes and everywhere on public transportation and sidewalks the feeling that white people do not ride together here in the public buses in trains, do not sit together with others in public space, are not of the city or hold themselves apart from it where they cannot be easily seen.