Fado

A man reaches close

and lifts a quarter

from inside a girl’s ear,

from her hands takes a dove

she didn’t know was there.

Which amazes more,

you may wonder:

the quarter’s serrated murmur

against the thumb

or the dove’s knuckled silence?

That he found them,

or that she never had,

or that in Portugal,

this same half-stopped moment,

it’s almost dawn,

and a woman in a wheelchair

is singing a fado

that puts every life in the room

on one pan of a scale,

itself on the other,

and the copper bowls balance.