White Lights

When you walked with me

Away from the strip mall bar

Across the highway

To that little graveyard

Where plastic flowers

Bloomed in yellow grass

We sat on a broken bench

Listening to the cars pass

And right above your head

In the branches of a tree

There were white lights

Swaying slowly in the breeze

There were white lights, white lights, white lights swaying in a tree

I know they were there

To stop kids kicking over graves

Or spray-painting tree trunks

With their favorite rock band’s name

But sitting there with you

Almost touching your white hand

Among the broken bottles

Crushed and faded cans

And those white lights, white lights, white lights swaying in the breeze

There was mystery

Singing from everything

The strip mall, the highway

The boarded-up skating rink

They were calling our names

In the strip mall parking lot

Our sweet drunken friends

Finally noticing we’d gone

But we just sat there

Not saying anything

Almost touching hands

Your hair flying in the highway breeze

Like those white lights, white lights, white lights swaying in a tree