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title
Issue # 5 September 2011
"... brevity is the soul of wit ..."
- William Shakespeare

Kate Falvey


 

The Cure

A stranger,
in an unguarded moment,
at the bus-stop, say,
or on a ticket line for an early show, might
look a certain way and lift another's curse,
perhaps by distractedly worrying the tarnished clasp
of an efficient patent purse, or by rubbing a thumb to a crease
in a latently optimistic brow. Or there might be contact,
the kinetic static of surprise
shocking shy smiles from the pardons. And later,
as the dusk purples and replies in kind
to the dark beseeching of the city's footfalls,
there might be among the hurly fray
a movement less resigned and less inured,
and more buoyantly far-reaching.