Aimed the wrong direction
on snowy South Fitzhugh
an S.U.V. bides its time.
It’s the middle of the night.
But for head and tail lights
and a screen’s harsh glow – see
the flutter of the driver’s
thumbs – the vehicle would hide
in the color of the hour.
This is a borrowed van
driven by someone who
borrows his brother’s name,
depending. Sometimes after dark
he borrows a place to sleep
next door where one of the kids
knows him as Dad. He’d be
locked up but for the judge
who loaned him back the world.
Idle quietly with me here
in the middle of the night.
But for a long day of falling snow
and serendipity’s lifelong appearances –
ours to pursue – we might not
bask in this full-moon-glitter
warm at a second-floor window.
Marjorie Power’s newest collection is Sufficient Emptiness, Deerbrook Editions, 2021. A chapbook, Refuses to Suffocate, appeared in 2019 from Blue Lyra Press. Southern Poetry Review, Barrow Street, Commonweal and Main Street Rag have taken her work recently. She lives in Rochester, N.Y. after many years in various western states. www.marjoriepowerpoet.com.
To read a Marjorie Power poem is to be surprised by the subject, cajoled into following the story or the message of the poem by unexpected images and the exact right words.