Some women master mirrors
in gas stations and motel rooms,
painting smiles to charm the night.
They learn to get by
when july deepens on fastbreath
	or uncertain hands.

They count tips in denny's,
lying themselves into poetry,
blending into the pavement
of pigeon drop gray---
	elegy clinging to pores
	like perspiration.

The ash-tray girls, their bodies:
tree stumps in mud, fashioned
in the light of sour milk
	and insult.

They buy french sleepers to weep in,
whisper abandonment, carry
love, light like a wafer
	on the tongue.

They pick up pennies, study them
for signs of age, see months
become smoke in still rooms along
	the back streets of Eden.

Ladies, hardened to glass,
they lose children in supermarkets,
sink into the cold
as minutes become urgent
and everything is counted,
like meter money,
	like days that pass. 

There is society where none intrudes, by the deep sea, and music in its roar.
byron

"It is wisdom to know others;
It is enlightenment to know one's self" - Lao Tzu