On the Seawalla community gallery of new writing, art and commentary hosted by Ron Slate

Noontime

 

 

At noon the church bells roll a hymn across our roofs.

“Misses the B flat minor,” my neighbor complains,

 

Although I can’t hear the notes she hears. I cried

In my childhood pew when I heard that hymn.

 

I know she’s in her studio inking monoprints.

My husband walks the dog, I close my notebook for the day.

 

What were those tears for, who for? I’d discovered God

Plays favorites, like teachers and coaches, like parents.

 

Oh, Lord, my God, the hymn tolls to shoppers at Whole Foods

Across the street, as they strip the shelves of paper goods.

 

When I in awesome wonder … My neighbor prints her latest

Image of the church tower as scaffolding without bricks.

 

She’s afraid to leave her house — low immunity, bad lungs;

She says printmaking “keeps the wolves away.”

 

Were my tears a clue to who I am now? Wary.

Vigilant. A blackbird. Last night I snapped the sun

 

As it set behind the steeple: gold light on the bronze bell.

A wing appeared in the picture but not the whole bird.

 

 

*     *    *     *     *

 

 

Junk Moon

 

 

The gun still, the mask black, his amber eyes

scared

beneath a black tasseled beanie pulled low.

 

I heard my voice shake snow from the boughs

of firs,

the silent houses watching my head hit ground.

 

Where has he gone, the clever teen who chose

to mug

a woman when deep snow muted his footsteps,

 

finding an unplowed street in Cambridge at dusk,

the trucks

still circling the Square, shovels stowed in doorways.

 

Sometimes in a snowstorm the moon appears,

sliced

like cantaloupe, orange on a white plate.

 

I’d wanted to escape a phone that wouldn’t ring

with apologies,

to tame my mind by foraging in the emptiness

 

of sidewalks, fences, tire tracks disappearing,

to glimpse

a sliver of orange moonlight through wind gusts.

 

I’ve studied the origins of the moon since then —

massive debris

from earth’s collision with Theia, the size of Mars.

 

No bloodied eclipse, no Harvest, no Blue or orange,

sees me

walk alone beneath the scrapyard of a junk moon.

 

Where has he put his memory of that snowstorm,

my face,

or the lucky indifference of the well-lit houses?