Capitol Hill---a poem by stephen richard eng

Capitol Hill

She sat in downtown restaurants alone,

And read her book until they shut the doors;

Defiant, seventeen, and on her own,

She made her coffee last an hour or more.

So when I couldn’t find her home I ran

Ridiculously about the neighborhood,

A comic maniac who’d been a man

Behaving like a wounded coyote would:

I circled, almost howling with brute pain

Around dark Washington, through every place

She ought to be but wasn’t—almost insane—

Ashamed of panicking for a mere face.

The restaurants we’re empty of her everywhere:

Could she have drowned in summer’s humid air?

05-11-75