While Someone Telephones

Wasted, wasted minutes that couldn't be worse,

minutes of a barbaric condescension.

—Stare out the bathroom window at the fir-trees,

at their dark needles, accretions to no purpose

woodenly crystallized, and where two fireflies

are only lost.

Hear nothing but a train that goes by, must go by, like tension;

nothing. And wait:

maybe even now these minutes' host

emerges, some relaxed uncondescending stranger,

the heart's release.

And while the fireflies

are failing to illuminate these nightmare trees

might they not be his green gay eyes.