This lone blue building at 4.00 a.m.,
with a light in a second floor oval window
and a lost faun that seems
just for a scampering moment
to light and bless the place
This streetlight that silhouettes me
– the only one on in a storm-hit block –
At four a.m. and one one hundredth
an elderly woman waves at me from the window
with a look as though she seems to recognize
a passing transcendence in my skin
To her, am I now her son?
Have I been lost to her all this time
Did I leave just a moment ago
returning now from fog
war, brothel, school or heaven?
Is that the reason for the tire
and the spin out in the ditch?
Who made the tire and went home early, sick perhaps
and who fashioned these shoddy atoms of cement and lukewarm rain
just so I could stand at just the right angle
with this proper formula of shadow
and she could see in me, in this moment
whatever trace of soul she needed
and the last of the flickering halogen
could somehow mold for her a smile
an afterthought within her
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