A Sentence of Patinations

Across the street from our new downtown office sits a cathedral (sits being an apt word, for a cathedral is the seat of the bishop) whose pale patina from the copper roof installed several years ago has pistachio-stained Montgomery Street, having oozed onto the sidewalk peopled by panhandlers and politicos alike, whispering intimations of greenery onto stale concrete, holding a paten of eucharistic morsels for anyone willing to offer their emptiness as two naked palms and a tiny pang of hunger.