Talitha Koum

Girl stood there in the bus station,
highlighted by the bright headlights--
shocked poor dear to
step back.
You know how people get when you step on them,
all rough-voiced, like the rumbling of the bus
just before it stops in the night's silence.

"What're you doing? Sleeping on your feet?"
Spins the wrath of the stepped-on,
spins the shadows those lights chase
to corners where cigarettes still burn unchecked
and bums, reeking of urine, curl themselves as small as they can,
babies against the concrete.

Someone turns a newspaper, the crinkle of
some other tragedy, something else gone wrong--
mass shooting! missing kid! this country's so broke
we might as well be thrown away!
Someone says, "We're all sleeping, aren't we?
All standing on our feet asleep when we ought to open our eyes
and see, open lips and taste."

And she felt, whoever it was, slip past her
the way the day slips past the night, with a soft,
"My bus is here,"
that made her want to follow.
"But, we have to wake up sometime, don't we?
Don't we?" She wanted to ask.
She was afraid that only the night would hear her cries.

But there is always more than the night
to catch them, to cradle them, and to give them meaning.