My sister held the baby as he died.
Not hers.
She held the nose-tube baby
as his mother exercised at the Y,
exorcized, for moments, grief,
setting fragile, ebbing boy in soft arms.
“Heron,” “Liberty” and “Odyssey”
Great blue heron, white in high green,
folds on self, forward falls toward water,
clear space, wingspan wind-catch, rise in flight.
I am semi-trailer truck in someone else’s tender canoe
— steep banks through suburbs, six crows
from one bank to the other frenzy a hawk
“Pa,” “Land mark” and “Dark night”
Drive Chronicles Avenue straight out
of downtown for three miles to the
railroad bridge, empty as a Roman
ruin, turn right toward the spray-paint
chaos of the Grass Lake rocks, right
again onto Esther Road, to 135, and
there’s tight-wound Pa sitting on the
dusk porch while nervous fireflies,
trespassers, skitter, knowing nothing
else, around the maypole of his chair.
“I was a tourist from honey-milk land,” “Inheritance” and “Overflowing”
I was a tourist from honey-milk land,
and Sister heard my question underneath.
She had her own.
“Are you packing?”
That kind of place.
The nun hugged her wizened chest.
She was old then,
dead now, I’m sure, thirty years on.
“Angels are out tonight,” “Brick wall scripture” and “City hymn”
Tonight, the typewriter keys slam rhythm
to ease coarse electricity under the skin.
The Sister of the Sacred Heart pleads alms
and sweats under her habit
as angels stride thickly east and west on her sidewalk.
Angels fly complex patterns
over the drunk anesthesiologist and the beautiful child.