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.