By early afternoon,
late evening
invades downtown—
hungrily
spinning dollops
of unseasonable light
into long, candied filaments,
which flicker their
semaphore lectures
across the grim, dis-
concerted faces
which improvise this cab stand—
just like
so many twenty-
five cent candles did
back
in that dingy
crimson church vestibule,
back when
poor grandma, and then
grandpa, quickly departed—
as if
our precious dead
are here
with us still, ever so
faintly,
but insistently
criticizing the living.
