~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The wire rims~
thin as a whisper,
holding the weight of every page he turned,
every clockface he squinted at before dawn.
Now they sit,
empty orbits on my desk.
I lift them,
and the world bends~
not as he saw it,
but as I imagine he did:
The morning newsprint smudging into prayer,
the stubborn lawnmower that refused to start,
my childhood face,
always slightly out of focus,
as if love itself were a thing
that needed adjusting.
I wear them like a ghost.
The bridge rests light,
almost apologetic,
as if they knew
they were never meant to be mine.
Through Pop’s lenses,
the light is softer,
the edges kinder.
The coffee stains on the counter
look like continents he never visited.
The crossword puzzle~
half-finished,
pen dropped mid-clue~
becomes a map of all the words
he didn’t have time to say.
I take them off.
The room sharpens
into my own life again,
but for a moment,
I swear,
the air smelled like his aftershave,
and the light was gold,
the way it is
just before it fades.
Unseen in the sky
Clockface shining as the moon
Silhouette of black
Date: 03/22/2023
Cool throngs of stars formed one vast arm to sweep
the coal-black clockface of the sky. To watch it
was to reel beneath the slow, imperious creep
of the never-ending circle. One could reach out,
it seemed, and almost touch the tart cicada song
which throbbed in soft insistent insect waves
with formlessness of drizzle, mass of stone.
But more than these, the patient ancients blazed
blackness from their gnarled necrotic trunks,
more ominously sensed than seen, and bled
into the dark those summer suns they'd drunk,
as tired as immortality, as dense as death.
We hope on heartbeats, count on slivers of light,
but hear within our blood the rhythm of night.
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