Maybe She Would Like Some Water, Kapuscinski

She rode a postwar Polish bus into the dark
neighborhood of my heart. Through the window,
untiring street lamps in the borough of silence
invited her to smoke her destiny in quiet puffs.

On this bus, she heard someone playing
an iPod so loud that Nirvana's Polly
bled from the ear-buds, and she thrummed
her fingers on her knee with the music.

Everything that is
our strength
is also our weakness, she said
to no one in particular.

She was quoting from I Wrote Stone.
I saw a tattered copy of the book
stuffed in her purse. I saw it
when I stole her wallet.

No one comes to my neighborhood uninvited
without paying for the ride
except dung beetles, ladybugs, and cockchafers.