Breathless and dark, I wait smack
in the middle of a deranged plain
for the cool glowing words
of this mysterious angel
who has landed close-by and pale
in the tinder, my only real company for
centuries, here under night's growing
translucent veil of slow suffocating
cloudsmoke—until finally, tolled off, one by
one, like very old dense iron church bells,
she intones the words—Son, hey, you got,
like, a lighter I could borrow?
