Tuesday Poem: previously published online by Fox Chase Review in 2009

 
City Just Before Dusk  

In the turning down of the day

the light folds like clean white sheets,

swagging across whole groups of buildings,

so great sections of the city glow,

bright as a Pre-Raphaelite angel’s face,

as he announces another coming of twilight.

Then stringy clouds pull everything horizontal,

fill the sky, as if the atmosphere’s

stretching itself after a cat nap,

so whole neighborhoods rub their eyes in half
tones of charcoal blue, as Vincent’s views of rain,

through the window of a Saint Rémy asylum, do.

In all of this we see night awakening

like the baby newly baptized,

and called for the first time by name.

Close by, his parents watch him

wriggle in the arms of the priest,

both of their hearts aflame.