Through fog and smoke a long ash crooks
at my cigarettes end.
It feels like a Hopper diner,
stark, sad eyes, a conversation stalls,
she sits steady, pieta-like in blue light.
I stare through the steam of my coffee.
Is this it, I ask, damn, is this all?
I know the smile and talk
are slight and transitory,
I know it's the still life that holds me,
holds me inside the frame
of another moment frozen,
frozen tight in the soft eternity
of roadsides and orange afternoons.
