For Ruth Stone

For Ruth Stone

Joseph Millar

Sometimes you say bad things about people 

 claiming it can't be helped 

you crawl farther into the darkness

 just to see what it feels like 

but today you count the late frozen stars 

 and Jupiter drifting into the dawn 

because Ruth the poet has passed away 

 who listened to the muse alone: 

the mailman and the trash truck driver, 

 the women who work in Lost and Found, 

their faded hair wispy as cotton gauze 

 in the discount store downtown. 

They are folding a dark wool sweater 

 that smells of camphor and lighter fluid, 

in one pocket a train ticket 

 from Roanoke to Syracuse. 

The creaky hinge on the Ladies Room door 

 is silent now in the vacant station, 

only a traveling woman asleep, 

 her suitcase tied with ribbons and twine 

and snowflakes dusting the platform, 

 their stellar dendrites and crystal rosettes 

flickering like signals from outer space 

 planetary and blind.