Varick and Watts

         "See the mechanical moons,
          sick, being made
          to wax and wane
          at somebody’s instigation." -Elizabeth Bishop

I wanted to say something haunting

about the way headlights bring out 

shattered fragments of glass 

in the sidewalks

we were walking

late, too late for our mothers' liking

had they known, but they didn't know

because it was the beginning of November

and we were sophomores--

second years in the city,

the four of us, free-range girls, traipsing 

late down Varick, toward 

the filthy maw of the southern tunnel.

The wind off the Hudson, like a leaking plastic

bag, sent party fliers hopscotching uptown.

There was a feeling that every moving thing

was being whirled by something unseen, 

by something that was close to revealing itself, 

and right then

I wanted to say that the smoke 

circling out of the subway grates

smelt of rotted cabbage, but I didn't.

There is nothing that needs to be said

when time and circumstance are stitching

their unrippable needlework on the soul.