Light Turnouts by John Ashbery

Light Turnouts

Dear ghost, what shelter

in the noonday crowd? I’m going to write

an hour, then read

what someone else has written.

You’ve no mansion for this to happen in.

But your adventures are like safe houses,

your knowing where to stop an adventure

of another order, like seizing the weather.

We too are embroiled in this scene of happening,

and when we speak the same phrase together:

“We used to have one of those,”

it matters like a shot in the dark.

One of us stays behind.

One of us advances on the bridge

as on a carpet. Life–it’s marvelous–

follows and falls behind.