Angels
Better get your angel on,
said Jennifer, her voice
lower and more urgent than
her usual laid back tone
I spent two charmed summers
listening to, on the grass,
at the beach, the world beyond
our reach and we the better
for it, the clouds a sign
that angels might exist,
not that we mentioned it,
focused instead on the marvel
of our own existence in
that time and place, a barn
in Vermont, light leaking
through rotted boards that looked
like what we had escaped,
bad friends, worse habits,
the chances we took so different
from what I remember
of those summers: night
rides to Hoosick Falls
to shoot pool in pairs,
the way she combed her hair,
the skirts she wore, the shorts
I rarely took off as if
that might bring bad luck,
keep the angels from showing.
Trapped in a Decade Long Gone
Sounds echo off the building
as I leave it, harsh and final.
I signed the papers and walked,
talked to no one alive.
Freedom’s like a beehive,
take too much and you’re stung,
punished for your needs,
banished from your local.
Loss isn’t fleeting:
it’s physical, durable
as a car battery
until it finally dies.
Sounds in my head contain
tambourine men, echoes
of masters, ruinous
sledge hammers. Then silence.
Tropes are metaphors gone astray,
strutting down avenues of glory
unaware of their uselessness,
trapped in a decade long gone.
