When I would go into bars in those days
the hard round faces would turn
to speak something like loneliness
but deeper, the rain spilling into gutters
or the sound of a car pulling away
in a moment of sleeplessness just before dawn,
the Doppler effect, I would have said shrewdly then,
of faces diminishing into the distance
even as they spoke. Their children
were doing well, somewhere, and their wives
were somewhere, too, and we were here
with those bright euphoric flowers
unfolding slowly in our eyes
and the sun which we had not seen for days
nuzzling our fingertips and licking
our elbows. Oh, it was all there,
and there again the same, our heads nodding,
hands resting lightly upon the mahogany sheen
of the bar. Then one of us would leave
and the door would turn to a yellow square
so sudden and full of fire
that our eyes would daze and we would
stare into the long mirrors for hours
and speak shrewdly of that pulling away,
that going toward something.
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