SHEKINAH

Crazed man passes a café where

at six tables in the sun

of a late afternoon in May

in our nation’s capital, six women

sit drinking coffee

Windmilling his arms, he’s after a

bit of God force, of brash

poetry, of sustaining passion—wants, as

he croons it, “to sex them

all night long”

They do not look up, they

do not stop turning the pages

of their books, do not stop

sipping, swallowing; indeed, they

now swallow harder