Lake water

 

Absolute blue wall of lake water

beyond the restaurant window

on Navy Pier where I once walked --

a leveled, abraded, cement tongue then,

sticking out from shore,

razzing any and every celestial being

looking down

from wide light-spackled emptiness.

 

I am in the metal ball created

by a sixteenth-century geographer

for the King’s pleasure and his own --

a clockwork model of earth

from the inside out

and the mechanism of the cosmos,

each rotation a new constellation.

 

My coffee, starless,

invites me to dive unseeing

through to some other side.

 

---

Patrick T. Reardon is the author of fourteen books, including the poetry collections Requiem for David, Darkness on the Face of the Deep, The Lost Tribes, Let the Baby Sleep and Salt of the Earth: Doubts and Faith. His memoir in prose poems Puddin’: The Autobiography of a Baby was published by Third World Press with an introduction by Haki Madhubuti.

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