Consider the postcards

The kaleidoscope that is Atlantic City / July, 2009

As if the pixels of light depicting the world she is framed in
              were impastoed by me to the monitor's glass canvass (to
                   be arranged
    according to the obligation of my anonymous nobility),
what good could I do
             to alter the facts of the world as it hustles around her?
             What odds

    do those birds stand to chance anyway?
Prevention is akin to greed. Say recovery
          and a sermon salts the air. Consider the postcards here
   on the counter beside me. They'll do no more than carry the
       word of their
senders, speak pictures: Jersey's domed capital looks like a junkyard

              of church bells, a reliquary of Sundays
     wracked and laid to rest. Noble martyr, Trenton fears no law
of diminishing returns, says it “makes,
              the world takes:” Another prays the next wet pebble
  be the one that makes a beach. Paydirt. We should be so lucky.

~  from Atlantic City Sunday Morning by Gregory Pardlo