POEM: I could spend hours watching you laugh

I could spend hours watching you laugh

waiting for the bus while the pigeons
look for scraps on the blacktop

also in line for this bus is a woman
with red feathers braided into her black hair

— I swear it’s true —

and another young woman next to me
has spent the better part of an hour
carefully inspecting every inch of her right leg

these New York summers make everyone a little loopy

back home we’d be dancing to reels
played by old men with a little bit of red
left in their beards

but in this city we each carry our own melody
hoping that someone else knows the tune