Flint

A man on the bus lifts a cigarette  
from the pack and lets it 
dangle from his lips. He gets the lighter 
from his pocket and sets his thumb  
against its spark before the bus stops.  
It makes me think we all want  
what we have, plus a little 
more, like the warmth 
of a stranger’s smile on the street,  
or smoke to sting the air  
in our throat, or a hand to hold  
as we walk the river. Some need 
is too deep to even name, how  
sleeping bodies still lean toward  
embrace, or how our lungs knew  
to reach and release each breath  
as soon as we stumbled from the shore.  
I wonder if those changing bodies passed  
the millions of years in the mouth of a cave 
before the moon, waiting for the yolky 
light of day, or were they content 
to brave the darkness with the body  
pressed to their own. I think the hands 
that picked up those two stones  
had nothing else to hold and tried 
to pass one long night by nicking the ore  
against flint against flint against flint against flint  
with no sense of the glint 
ready to flicker into flame. I want  
my need to be so simple it is holy  
as the fire that glows on a lonely face.