A Month of Sundays

Kathleen Hellen

In the exaggerated light of perigee

I pitter-patter to the bus stop in my flip-flops.

The minute lengthening like a fenced-in shadow on

a lit-up field ... the diamond sparkling, the trees like silent sentries

I can count on when a truck comes up, its headlights ducking between

houses with their lights on, lighting up the boys in gangs of three

who toss the football, a joke or two. I speak their language with a nod up,

the way it ought to be, never down, never chin tucked under.

We do it right tonight. No forgeries. No rock and dust in samples

auctioned off. The moon's a base ... or so it seemed ... when was it?

years ago ... a man walked on the chalked and cratered surface of TV

and seized the flicker of the future, like a baseball thrown and stuck

in some belief. A flag planted, light-yeared on what's noble.

Michael Jackson's Walk not jive hallucination.

I follow in the footprints, in orange imitation

of a streetlight. I give all my hopes to seas

of cold serenity, The Man in Cheese

or to a rabbit rice-cake-making.

I take the bus to somewhere on

the near side of the pie.