Bright Shadows

Dearborn North Apartments
Chicago, Illinois
Lola Haskins

Rows of rectangles rise, set into brick.
And in every rectangle, there is a lamp.
Why should there be a lamp in every window?
Because in all this wide city, there is not
enough light. Because the young in the world
are crazy for light and the old are afraid
it will leave them. Because wherever you are,
if you come home late but it looks like noon,
you won't tense at the click as you walk in
which is probably after all only the heat
coming on, or the floorboards settling.
So when you fling your coat to its peg in
the hall, and kick off your heels, and unzip
your black velvet at that odd bee'd angle as if
someone were twisting your arm from behind,
then reach inside the closet for a hanger,
just to the dark left where the dresses live,
what happens next is a complete surprise.

Yesterday's poem and that from the day before are like facets of the same stone from which was cut Ted Sexauer's "The Trail to the Well by My An". In different ways, each reminds me of water: how precious it is, how freely and reluctantly given by nature, how readily withheld and easily polluted, its grace. Too many things are forgotten, taken casually, if not for granted. Among them is home (another theme shaded by Catherine Obianuju Acholunu's poem cited here the day before yesterday).

Few, if any, poems are about one thing and one only. Like pearls in the shells of injured oysters, they have layers.

It's said that shamans are wounded healers. Perhaps poets are wounded prophets, standing in their elements, scrying and crying truths.

Keep the lights on. Or don't. Light's an illusion. It can keep you from seeing.