Parousia

She says she was eating or opening a window or just walking
dully along, and always had been, but tonight there might be
few angels. These things. Our dog
wagging across the foreground, the porch
that still needs fixing and has since we moved, the wind
scraping along the ice. The honest shepherds
(let them sing their morally easy life). Each sudden
tree lining the road, long leaves and aspens, fir and blue spruce
and the on-edge bushes. The purling road itself
where wheel lift tow trucks pull onto the hallowed ground of another’s suffering
with that thick steel cross leaned against the bed. The mistakes breaking
us toward these three libraries we’ve never been and the books
on the shelves of all libraries. The hospital
was growing in my sight for eight short months; winter sits in; the kings
and pawns show up, each relative and each relative’s relative
and Emerson and the condescending snow and so many blue things. And just now,
feeling the need for it, I walk out
to get air and look at the lights in the lot,
and the ignorant stars must have seen it too.

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