Broken Down on the Hard Shoulder

Breakdown

     shoulder to cry on

          cold shoulder     oh, it’s

cold out here in a place

     where there is nothing

          to shoulder aside

and  neither is there

     any evidence     any real evidence

          of breakdown     more perhaps

a sort of graze     a shunt

     nothing memorable

          just a trickle     a touch

of cold as I remember you

     the morning after     any morning

          after any before

weeping (or so I had hoped)

    on your soft disarming shoulder

          so pale so white and so

downy     like a memory of babyhood

     before the breakdown

          before all the fuss around 

the break (break time, arm break,

     the break in continuity that precedes

          recollection of trauma

such as you might experience

     stuck out here on the hard shoulder

           with only the memory of breakdown

awaiting you as you await

     rescue    softening relaxation)

          nothing like a greenstick break

no fracture of the shoulder

     while the waiting is getting colder

          and my remembering     the rearming

of my memories encounters

     the hard unyielding rock

          of you but also     of course also

the healing of the break

     the yielding of the shoulder

          the cupping of the damaged limb

arrival of the black ambulance

     skidding along the tarmac

          of the misplaced     dislocated shoulder