man at bus stop

clipped exchange

slowly it came, her sleep
dark and thick
as molasses.



then he spoke of the birds - "hundreds
of them, brightly coloured, this
big" - back too early from the
south,

scrapping over the few frozen
fermented berries left from
last spring, stumbling drunk into the glass
of his kitchen window.



soft brown leather cap,
spotted now by the wet snow.
his words come out in fuzzy
clumps - "pervasive"
- so roundly, thickly pronounced,
each syllable delicately spat.