to mary

I missed the bus yesterday. It was supposed to come at two thirty, but it usually came late, so I decided to arrive at two thirty five. There was nobody there when I got there. I stood around for a while, waiting, hoping something would happen. Nothing did. Nobody came. The buses in my city come once every half hour. I don’t like standing still. My house is only about three miles from the bus stop, so I figured I would probably beat the bus there if I walked. I walk decently fast, about a mile every ten minutes. I started walking. Abou half a mile in, I passed somebody. We both saw each other from far away, scrutinised each other, and then turned our heads until we drew very close to each other, at which point we both looked at each other’s mouths, and nodded in some sort of obscure salutation. More of an acknowledgement of existence. After walking for a few feet, I turned around and looked back at him. I assume he did the same thing. I kept on walking.
It was autumn, and the leaves were falling off of the trees. Most of them were orange, but quite a bit of them were also yellow. I thought I saw a green leaf in there somewhere, blending in and standing out in the most confounding and ponderable mix of subtlety, efficiency, and audacity. It crumbled – partially – my confidence in my senses, it made me wonder if there really was a green leaf, or if it was just a phantasmic blur in my peripheral vision, in and out of eyes and brain like a racecar crashing through a cheap restaurant. Or maybe there was a green leaf, but only for a split second, or rather a few split seconds; long enough for me to see it and percieve it, but not long enough for me to know whether or not I had actually seen or percieved it.
A fast gust of wind blew in the opposite direction I was walking, making the piles of leaves on the ground collected by the low-wage immigrant workers perform some sort of surreal tapdance, each leaf jumping up and down momentarily, and then lightly falling back into the pile.
Another gust of wind, this time in the same direction I was walking, blew. I heard a scratching noise behind me. Another gust of wind blew. The scratching noise continued, and then stopped. I felt something fall into my hand. It was a crumpled-up piece of non-lined white paper. I dismantled the ball. On it was written a poem, with an illegible name written at the bottom.
Titled, to mary
I met a big man
In the city
With a bathrobe
Slung
Over his shoulder
Pounding a nail
Into
A
Piece of wood

The nail was rusty
I didn’t stay
To see
Whether he was
successful