Micheal Waters - "Singles"

I don't know anyone more lonely
than the woman listening
to the late news, memorizing
baseball scores for coffee.

She must undress so carefully,
folding her beige blouse
as if for the last time,
not wanting to be found unkempt

by detectives in the morning.
Sometimes I hear her talking
as she roams from from room to room
watering her plumeria,

the only splash of color.
She sets to places at the table
though no one ever comes,
then turns to the boredom of bed

thinking Indians 7-Yankees 3,
Cardinals 11-Mets 2
until sh rises before dawn
and drives crosstown to work.

Could anyone be more lonely?
She doesn't acknowledge, again,
the man in the tollbooth
who's spent the whole night there,

not even a magazine before him,
grateful now to be making change
and touching fingers, briefly,
with such a beautiful stranger.



Line Drives