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Sheltering With Friends
(February, 2021)
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1
Sheltering with friends
from the winter
inside a garage​​ in Ford's Dearborn
in this new state of capture
this novel quarantine
​
2
​​​
A car exhales
its workday's remnant fumes​
​​
it roosts just inches
from the modest little plastic skamla
that gathers us around it​
​​​
a grimy plastic surface
strewn with
traces of cashews,
hollow shells devoid of pistachios,
shriveled serpentine clementine peel,
insignificant flakes of ash wafting about,
enduring cigarette burns scorched
deep into the rigid plastic surface,
like crashed aircraft skids
and echoes of our
last pronouncements
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3
​
our aging knees and spines
subdued by a punishing day
yet again​
​
our weakened teeth and eyes
incapable of sin​
​
our shoulders loaded with bundles
of sighs and concessions
​​
anything we declare
is but a temporary triumph,
a venture in words
​
4
​
Outside,
​
a dark evening overtakes
the February landscape
​
an exacting razor-like wind
offers cold, sobering atonements
for anyone with the courage to atone
few are the takers
​​
Outside,
​
the heart of a crushing storm
hurls its icy munitions
at the walls of our shelter
​
before stumbling begrudgingly on
to other misfortunes ​
Outside,
​
a mass pandemic
an anointed shutdown
a societal convulsion
​
the ferocious jumbling
of worlds and forces​​
5
​
Inside,
​
the secretive adventurist elations
of three wistful men
​
giddy wondering aloud
what may emerge anew
​​
my tall friend is smoking,
waiting for nothing anymore
​
he grasps with a silent will
the old promises of liberation
​
he moves his hand slowly
towards his charming ravaged ashtray
​
my other friend is also smoking,
rather petulantly​
​
he forages with a silent will
the promises of redemption
​
his disquieted gaze focused forward
onto a shifting wall of smoke
​
as if to follow a frightful muted
theatrical projection
that only he can see
​
we talk about how much we can still
remember
and how much​
we can still conjure
​
I watch them both stammer,​
between moments of my own
wildly blithe
decrees​
6
Outside,
​
tender shoes press obscurely
into layered snow
​
he says his son,
coming home from work
​
from university
​
from the perilous minglings
with the people
​
from the daily searchings
of early manhood
​​​​
7
​
We listen from our shelter
to the frenzied thrillful night
​
eerie glorious sounds,
like lavishly illustrated storybook pages
howling snowy white brushstrokes,
savagely mingled between
swerving blacks and blues
​
and small orbs of borrowed gold​
globules of light​
​
guidance​
dangling in the night
​
the night sky sits heavy,
overlaid with murmurings​​
voices sprinkling warmth
across the infinite dark​​
​
the outstretched fingers
of the helpless​
reaching across the soft, cottony
fibers of time
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