WAITING TO CROSS

One man closes his hand.

He will not show us

the silver buckle

he uncovered in his garden.

One man reads houses.

They make sense to him,

grammar of lights in windows.

He looks for a story to be part of.

One man has no friends.

His mother is shrinking

at a table with one chair.

She dreams a mouse

with her son’s small head.

One man feels right.

The others must be wrong.

And the world? It does not touch him.

One man stares hard

at the other men’s profiles

against the sky.

He knows he is one of five men

standing on a corner.