You are the spotlight
mounted atop a tugboat
chiseling through two feet
of January ice—
swiveling left and right
like the eager head
of a bird foraging
for exposed worms
and loose twigs—
panning from east
to west bank
of the Mississippi River,
and you just so happen
to stop your darting vision
on a shadowed figure—
a brooding man,
still a boy, really,
a boy with a man’s scruffy
three-day beard,
puffing on a three-dollar
cigar, its lit tip tilted
toward the ground—
the boy really a broken
flower drooping at the neck,
unmoved by your hard stare.