God Bless the blind dates
middle-aged couples go on
after meeting on Craigslist
and God Bless children on bicycles
and dusk
and tow trucks
she laughs and says,
“I think I should,
but I don’t.”
there is a noise of cars,
a shift of gears,
he says he’s Jewish,
Polish,
and tells her about
the Diaspora.
God Bless jet contrails,
roads that form giant horseshoes,
curving in from the horizon and back out again,
like a river in the hills,
like the Meuse,
the Missouri.
he says “Mumbai,”
he says he’s a teacher,
she has kids,
and she gestures with
surgical precision
upon every word.
God Bless
electrical poles,
workers just getting off the job,
filing out the automatic doors,
lighting up a cigarette
he went pre-med in college,
she studied biology and hopes to become a doctor.
his gray polo shirt seems warm enough for him
even as the sun goes down,
and even as the wind picks up.
God Bless elderly drivers,
and those who honk at them.
the middle-aged blind-daters get up,
and cross the parking lot
to another coffee shop
on the other side from the one I’m at
and my source of
entertainment vanishes.
I push the end of my pen,
which retracts,
click-clack,
and a crow pecks at the crumbs of a cookie on the pavement,
click-clack.
God Bless the blind-daters.
may they become blind lovers.
