(For A.P.C)

Two women sit at a table by a window. Light breaks
unevenly on both of them.
Their talk is a striking of sparks
which passers-by in the street observe
as a glitter in the glass of that window
Two women in the prime of life
Their babies are old enough to have babies
Loneliness has been part of their story for twenty years,
the dark edge of the clever tongue,
the obscure underside of the imagination
It is snow and thunder in the street
While they speak the lightning flashes purple
It is strange to be so many women
eating and drinking at the same table
those who bathed their children in the same basin
who kept their secrets from each other
walked the floors of their lives in separate rooms
and flow into history now as the woman of their time
living in the prime of life
as in a city where nothing is forbidden
and nothing permanent