In some abandoned shard of time
in Oregon, on a day soaked by slow mists
I’m in line to get into a punk show
when I meet Charlotte Ann.
With a fluttery tap on my shoulder
she grins, “Look, we've worn the same shoes!”

From the way her eyes lit when she spoke
I thought she’d stolen those plump bits of blue,
plucked them straight from the branches of heaven
and laughed when the gods shook their fists at the earth.
I knew I was right when they focused on me,
she said, “Have we met somewhere before?

We leave lipstick prints on her last cigarette
and blow milky-grey smoke from our noses.
She’d just dropped out of high school
and was learning to fly a plane, told me
“The only way to see the world
is from every direction at once.”

Her body and soul were the shifting wind
brimming with a red-blooded need for right now.
She tapped her foot and tugged her skirt,
and when we talked about music
she clapped and smiled, sighing
“Oh, to have ever seen Elvis!”

She calls the guard a chicken ****
when he asks to search her bag,
and by the time I make it inside
she’s a plume of smoke, wafting among the crowd
trailing behind her notes of apricot
and cotton after a rain.