A woman is reading a tabloid at a bus stop;
Across the street, a truck unloads wooden crates.
Nearby, a homeless-looking man enters a clinic,
Concealing a fatal illness or disappearing hope.
In the meantime, the weather is regular, ordinary.
Men go to work to women, women to work to men.
Underneath it all, a common yearning, blood course,
Shivering tableaus suspended in silence, hushed.
Something here wants to be admired, wants to
Snap and shudder and then calm itself back to silence.
Black money slips across the counter; the man
Jingles his keys, fits sunglasses to his head.
The woman suddenly remembers her daughter’s grief,
Breathless before an afternoon’s blithe butchery.
