FROM NORTH HILLSIDE

                    I would like to walk  
                    Out of my heart, under the great sky.  
                    I would like to pray. 

                                    ––Rainer Maria Rilke 

One, others–– 
soon the whole city is lit. 
And on West Benton a string of scarlet 
marks out that distant ridge 
for craft flying low and slowing 
toward runways just beyond the trees. 

Once I groped a dim recess over there, raising a shade 
on wings defined in moonlight 
by pinpoint flashes of gold and blue. 
That form seemed to hover awhile-- 
some great, dark angel stretched above our houses--
and was gone like a dream. 

And now these few stars––then one more–– 
flare as though from not far beyond my neighbor’s elm 
like the highest lights of a city 
where even households on overlooks 
rarely sleep or stay warm. Little is born there 
but wind and remote fire. 

Some of us will coast, alone with the void 
a long time in this wind, 
minding the lights 
of our own tinseled windows 
among the drifts, brushwood, and crows. 
And won’t go in for hours.  


                              for Gil Levine 
c2016 by Jeff Grinnell

Photo by Bob Campagna

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REVOLVER BOY

                             Foreseen from his peephole closet

The gun reeled back
from a pinpoint view
of some figure stripped on her bed––
when the gathering dusk
was yanked by Father,
close as a hangman’s hood.

Next door for hours
she lay there, hemmed-in,
out of moans and spells;
though red hands swarmed
his room at dawn
and thrust the gun to her wall.

Lit thunder crashed
their doors by nine––
but the battered gun had gone;
and, blackouts later,
down flights he rained
shattering fire, like God.


                    for Egon Schiele, René Magritte and Frans Masereel

c2016 by Jeff Grinnell

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