Small Comfort by Katha Pollitt
Coffee and cigarettes in a clean cafe, forsythia lit like a damp match against a thundery sky drunk on its own ozone,
the laundry cool and crisp and folded away again in the lavender closet-too late to find comfort enough in such small daily moments
of beauty, renewal, calm, too late to imagine people would rather be happy than suffering and inflicting suffering. We're near the end,
but O before the end, as the sparrows wing each night to their secret nests in the elm's green dome O let the last bus bring
love to lover, let the starveling dog turn the corner and lope suddenly miraculously, down its own street, home.
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