Stranger In A Bar In Memphis

She was at the bar in Memphis in the kind of bar
that Memphis has–the lived-in kind, the scar
on the face of the street that means the bar has been there longer
than the neighborhood’s current version and the stronger
pull of an old bar in a new evening is its own thing,
and she was in it like she belonged and the ring
of her ease in a bar she clearly didn’t know
was the ease of someone who belongs in any place they go.

Stranger in a bar in Memphis and she’s at the end of the row
of the bar stools with a drink I don’t know and the low
warm light of the Memphis bar doing what it does
to a woman at the end of the bar and the because.
Stranger in a bar in Memphis, her at the end.

She caught me looking and didn’t look away and the attend
of the catching was two full seconds and then she looked
back at her drink and I sat there with the hooked
feeling of a man who’s been seen seeing and the two
seconds of direct contact in a bar and the view.

I walked to the end of the bar and she didn’t look surprised,
and I said: I’m passing through and she said: surmised,
which is the one-word answer that means: I know,
and the conversation that followed was the glow
of a bar in Memphis at ten o’clock with a woman who travels
and talks like someone who’s done the full unravels
of herself and put it back together and I was in it,
for two hours and the Memphis night and every minute.