hail

TO A GIRL WAITING FOR A BUS

It will never last,

anything said

to the frozen ground,

though you hover

and hold in and hush

your mortal warmth

and nurse every frigid thought

as though it might die

without you.

A child’s thought,

that. The sky

in its lacerated swath

of light was once an idea

of forever,

a template for the end.

Just as the stars

gleamed cheaply

in the radio’s blue

blue firmament, a song

pretended to speak

to anyone

about anything. There you stood

as though there you’d spilled

and it began

where you were soft, wherever—

in the subterranean root

of each blind tooth,

in the salt-sewn creases

behind your locked knees,

it began,

the pain or a song,

it made no difference then,

it began

lightly, like snow,

to blot the abiding air

of everything you might hope

to leave behind.