Live Light
       

There are lines at the station,
everyone wonders what’s holding
things up. A big question
pops out of the frost cabbages,
getting slowly and methodically
vague. The lines continue
to grow. Everyone is waiting
for something. Why won’t it come?
Some of us gesticulate to ourselves.
A passerby embraces another passerby;
he knew her somehow, he said,
from a distant life. I was spending
all my time trying to decipher
the backgrounds of things
and this was driving me back.
A stone wheel in the ground
wouldn’t rotate in any direction
so we remained without direction,
waiting. Is it true that each instant
happens for a reason, and must
this be believed? I am sitting here
drinking too much for a reason.
She’s walking across the street
for no apparent reason
for a reason. It seems temporary,
this spot on the earth which stands
for eons. When my son was born,
I was smoking in the hospital lot.
Five meteorites shot out of themselves
and I watched them. Time at times
can strike like a loose bandoleer
in the dead of night; then was unusually bright,
the tails of meteors like strings of glass
illuminating things small animals share.
Is this the best I can do? One easily
forgets; what kind of light
does it take. History, at times, at least
for an instant, glances back.

Tweet
Copyright © 2012 James Grinwis All rights reserved
from The National Poetry Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission