after a photograph by J.H. Lartigue, 1900

I.

Seated towards the rear, facing backwards, smoking
in the cool day, he briskly turned his head

toward the stranger, who jumped onto the moving
streetcar, one hand holding her skirt up and

uncovering her rounded calf and ankle
clasped in a black stocking. He saw everything, felt

and heard everything: the swift brightness of minnows
in a current, the taste of the first

fruit swiped from a market stall, and how
the hazel switch whistled in the air