What You Were Looking For

Turned out to be beside you, all along.
You were flicking through Carver’s poems, still looking,
although this time you couldn’t say for what.
The strip of a cigar box, the bookmark,
the stub of the afternoon, already smouldering into the dark.
The sound of static, metallic, coming from somewhere.
You picture string, pulled tight, between two cans.
In the street, you see a woman in a lilac cardigan.
She stops to read the notice on a telegraph pole.

Sometimes, you can’t see what your looking for,
even when it’s right under your nose.

Except, in this moment of now, 
you don’t need to go out 
to know what’s written there.