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Mark Belair
Nighttime
I found kinship
once
in a traffic light
that cycled
all night
in the deserted
intersection
outside my motel.
Years later, in a soft evening rain,
I found it again
in an overstretched
black garbage bag
waiting
by a dark restaurant.
Then late in life, when I spied
an old, disused subway car
in a dimly lit corner
of the train lot
at the end of the line,
and saw
how its splashes of graffiti
made it seem simultaneously
assaulted and beautiful,
I had to admit
that its grace was something
to see—if apart from me.
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