I ran down three times with quarters

I ran down three times with quarters,

dress shoes soaked at the toe.

The mist was doing what mist does:

making things marginally slow.

The meeting kept finding new corners,

someone kept finding the floor.

I fed the meter and climbed back up.

Someone was still keeping score.

The fourth time down, the flag was up,

the ticket already damp—

eleven dollars, folded wrong,

tucked under the wiper's clamp.

Six minutes still on the meter.

Six. I read the fine print twice.

Nobody in it was wrong.

The gutter held a cup of ice

that used to be something cold.

I stood there a little longer than I needed.

Put the ticket in my coat.

The afternoon conceded

nothing. The mist kept going.

I went back up. The voice was still explaining.

The same process, the same words.

I sat down. Something was still remaining

on the agenda. I wrote a number. Crossed it out.

Six minutes. That's what I had.

The flag still in my head. The ticket.

The afternoon going bad

in the quiet way afternoons do—

not falling, just losing its light.

The meeting was still in the room above me.

Six minutes. Then the night.