Parking Lot Children – A poem.

They stand just out of reach, rippling
with the small puddles displaced by snowflakes.
Their mouths move with the easiness of friends,
muffled engines starting, the kiss of tires on wet pavement,
the sizzle of a cigarette catching and releasing
a snowflake in a small burst of steam.
When the snow slips through the blacktop,
they open their rippled mouths and catch the flakes
on their tongues. They are ghosts
eating ghost snow, hands raised high to the blacktop sky,
fingertips brushing the bottoms of shoes,
hoping to wrap tiny hands around ankles and pull
the living underneath the blacktop.
But they are unable to pass through.

JKolasch