At Sunday Morning AA
The evangelical pastor who had loaned us
a small room in his church for our meeting
stopped in for a moment to welcome us
before going to the sanctuary to preach.
A big man in a dark suit, white shirt and tie,
he was wearing one of those headsets
with a curved, almost invisible wire
with a little round moon of a microphone
out on its end, inches away from his smile,
that moon caught in orbit and encircling
his head, showing its dark side to us
and its bright side to what he was saying.
We were invited to attend service after
our meeting, though none of us would.
Then the centrifugal force from that moon
turned his face back toward the door,
and, with the brief wave of a couple of
ecclesiastical fingers, he and his satellite
spun away, on down the long hallway
to Jesus, whom he had kept waiting.
Another Summer Solstice
I have lived long enough to have listened to rain
put out a bonfire, a slow rain, hiss after hiss,
a fire that my neighbor made, then jumped over
laughing. Have stood back and looked on
as if with a whiskbroom rain swept the coals
in from the edges, making a bright little pile
at the center that made a last effort to flame up
before taking down and folding its flags.
Have seen the gray ashes blacken with rain
and my neighbor grow old while I too grew old,
walking away under the rain, now and then
turning, like this, to look over my shoulder.