[1] In what registers of the woman,

(whose gaze intersects my straying gaze, across this room)

does my loner face

(deep brown & scruffy like this wind beaten Japanese maple leaf I use as a bookmark)

sign its name,

(more squiggle than cermonial floriush)

if at all?

[2] As Dylan's coarse low voice sandpapers the words, and each of them becomes an antique coin scuffed clean of identity, the kind seen behind museum glass (which is this ebbing and swelling cafe talk),

I am suffling through money in my purse, looking for the acceptable currency to pay off the ogre of dissapearances.