I stopped on my bicycle this morning at a traffic light near the bus stop where my street enters a bigger one, and in the fraction of a minute that I was frozen there I saw/heard two people talking, a young man and a young woman, whom I didn't know.  I rode away as she turned and walked away from him.  For the hour that I rode along the river, the scene became a short story that became a poem when I got home.

“It’s my way or the highway,” he said,

using the phrase he had heard someone say

long ago in a context he couldn’t recall,

and he wondered as the last syllable passed his lips

if it was used often and generally enough to be a cliche

and decided that it was indeed no more or less than that

which made him wish he could call back the words,

but there they were ringing in his ears

while he watched to see if her eyes smiled

because she knew how silly he felt

or because she was deciding to stay with him

or maybe even to say, “To hell with it,”

or maybe even, “Go fuck yourself, buster,

because I don’t need this kind of shit.”

At any rate, she smiled and didn’t say a word

just stood there motionless except for her eyes

with her hands in the pockets of the blue coat

that looked as if it might have been lifted 

from the grocery cart full of old clothes

and other odds and ends from other people’s lives

belonging now to the resident street woman of Linda Vista

who lives in the bushes and on the bench at the bus stop

where he catches his ride to work every morning.

He waited and watched until it seemed to him an hour had passed

when she finally said without losing any of the strength from her smile,

“Which way do I go on this street if I want to get to someplace else from here,”

and she turned away from him and left without another word.