--- P A T R I C K   K E L L Y

Eastern Europe  no place for
the newly miserable

No one lives here
we all live   somewhere else
where life happens

Work happens here    work and 
waiting to leave
dreary evenings      rain and snow
rotten vegetables
an Edward Hopper nightmare
the only colors
filthy yellow   blood red
and the joyless unrelenting gray

A bus rounds the corner
the crush of people
as if Christ himself
were behind the wheel
come to save us from this
place

and these old ladies   all belly
breast and sharp elbows   moustaches
stippled on their angry lips 

I press forward with them
through folding doors to 
somewhere else
the city waits on the other side
a desperate whore with nothing
but time

Inside the bus we wait and breathe and wait
to be delivered
the dead air hangs between our faces
horrible shoes scuffing the floor

The bus lumbers forward 
jolting us
old woman's hand clawing my sleeve
no smile has touched her lips since
the war

A hand swipes across the window   
translucent now with our moisture

Suddenly there are trees
red-shingled roofs melting through snow
then a field of brown stalks 

The landscape a dirty sheet
unfolding toward the horizon

Two hundred blackbirds descend
like the shadow of a
broken-hearted goddess