On Route 11: Waiting on Blood Tests

George Ellenbogen
From:   Along the Road to Eden. Véhicule Press, 1989

I knew it as Nikos, this
caf� where few cars stopped.
The door is boarded up,
like a house no one visits.

I lean inside the phone booth,
its glass door flapping like paper
in wind that cuts through ferns,
disturbing by the roadside

a handful of wheat tips:
their endings, pointing
through stems to thin wind
ponds, broken spurts

of air around corn stalks.
No one remains. Some put up
signs for a year or two; the
signs drop and snow brings

the roof down. In this booth.
I dial, count white cars.
waiting to discover what
my mother is silent about

as she counts the ceiling slats
and wonders whether her corpuscles
are turning like fall leaves
into an arithmetic she understands.

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George Ellenbogen's works copyright © to the author.