FIVE O'CLOCK

A laughing, babbling stream of bodies
Flowed and eddied around him,
He was but a bit of flotsam
Carried along, isolated, separate.

His thoughts were his alone,
None craved their secrets,
No eyes waited, searching for his sight,
No waiting smile to soften a harried face,
No voice to fill his void
With the natter of her day.
No sharing,
No caring arms awaited his arrival,
None cared for his survival.

He overheard in passing
Words,
Fractured phrases painted Picasso-pictures only,
Nothing to grasp, to cling to.
Other solitary islands, eyes cast down
Or focused on distant destinations,
Unbending bodies offered no point of purchase
For a drowning man.

He was on an ebbing tide,
At peak flow, rushing outward.
Lights flashed by, buses coughed,
Subterranean entrances filled
As the tide receded—

It was five o’clock.