Woman Descending in Park

She produces a pint of cheap gin. 
Contemplates it. Finishes it. 
And waits as noting is illuminated. 
Not the pain in breathing, 
or the lovers that aren’t. 
Only the expanding silence
of being alone fills her mind. 

In failing tenebrous light
she tosses her empty bottle
and then, in unsteady contemptuous gait, 
she flounces
past a couple of burnt-out freaks
from the seventies, 
hunkering
in the falling shadows, 
snorting coke, and talking
about the meaning of poverty. 
She swings past them 
ranging into the blank and
widening night. 
There she sashays past parkmen, 
sitting like gravestones: 
aging, grained and pebbled fingers
dancing deadly 
on mahogany canes;
eyes
harnessed
only
on the bucking of the sea. 

by Steve de France