Beads
The beads zoom by swift as halo-
gen lights hung above the highway
tracing the broad curve of night,
till one bead catches between fin-
ger and thumb, smooth and faintly oiled
with ten thousand touches, pausing
then past, a balloon having slipped
its string through the child’s baffled hand,
lifted on wind and light, a dis-
tant speck, gone; or spark, expan-
sive, tickling through the whole wide sky,
the blue so bright it shimmers gold.