Invitation From Hopper
She leans forward into the bay window.
Water, a long way off and a loon cries.
In the room, a man speaks,
someone listens. Expectations
are set in motion. She remains
frozen at the window, waiting,
not a matter of time. The call
of the loon carries over the water.
Expectations have a way of shifting.
Though The Scream has been stolen,
Oslo keeps its appeal, the train ride
a preliminary. Formal introductions
have their own façade. Do you
bow or let your eyes reach
their own conclusions? So much
has entered, rushing to fill the gap.
Still she leans into the morning light.
The thicket, green and familiar,
doesn’t distract. Out there,
the air has a yellowness, lifting
from the tall growth gone dry.
Anticipation holds, a thread not quite sewn.
By The Grace Of
The orange moon
plays the banjo, hot tempos
over blackest night
as the city bravely lights its tower-tops.
The beat
presses through glass.
Ovens blister
the sleepless in New York.
All things interior
breed new eyes, opening to the unseen,
held for the perspicacious
to uncover in the star-hung night.
Delicate lights
signal windows, signal pauses
for thought,
a revelation luminous as the moon.
Country calls can almost
be heard,
but their value
escapes
the impeded.
Night birds have nested
in the lungs
of many born in tall grass
gone dry,
grown foreign.
