In Little Rock

Perhaps, this morning, we’re there, normal and soon forgotten, as news is when it’s passed over breakfast, like love, something that’s always cast, too heavy to hold for long. We breathe it in, the bacon, the coffee. We listen to the little quavers as the local tongues, water over rock, rise and fall, like stones skipping soft into the white that smoothed them. The women speak like grandmothers, softly opening their mouths, opening and drawing advice from themselves, like biscuits, and offering in kindness a little more than anyone could ask, more than anyone can take. I know their pitying. It looks like patience, the look on everyone’s faces as the peddler shuffles in his blindness, black hand held open, everyone awaiting the hiss of door, the whisper in everyone’s throats, breaking from patience into pleasure.