Noted

Noted

The bar of your right arm at my waist
when you brake too hard. Your condiment
choices: the pink packets that taste
like sweetened chalk dust, two percent
milk splashed in after. Your coffee
the color of black walnut wood.
The house down the street, with fifty
cacti on its blue porch. The thud
of the neighbor’s car door versus
the thud of my own. The green
lettuce, shelved, glistening in the mist
exhaled over the produce, the sheen
of the carrots. The pharmacist’s face,
unhorrified by any illness or drug,
the boy kicking his saxophone case
while he waits on the corner, the hug
he gives his mother when she drives
up, his relief. The owl lifting from the tree
in the dark yard, and the cool air that arrives
one night and stays, though it seems early.