Pawtucket
Daniel Bouchard
“Look at the stars, look, where’s the moon?”
Gone against the glow of ballpark lights.
Orion is very prominent, and has a dog.
He owns a sword too, like a pirate,
but he’s called a hunter and fears no animal.
Three stars lining up like that is a marvel.
When Orion appears it’s time
to put your bathing suit away.
An arachnid brought Orion down.
Our nephew, acquiring language, holding hands,
looks up:
Botein, the belly star, for spring when all lambs
receive raspberries from parents
to celebrate the greening of things
and also mark their escape from the cave
of Cyclops. If you look at the night sky
with children
you can hear their laughs.
“Look at the stars, look, where’s the moon?”
Gone against the glow of ballpark lights.
One day in Ipswich Jimmy Bacchus sat
at a picnic table eating fish and chips
when a bandit came and threatened the clam shack owner.
Terrified, Jimmy jumped into the marsh.
For no apparent reason, he turned into a fish
below water and a goat above. Still,
he managed to phone for help and the bandit ran off.
As a reward, the owner placed a rendering
of Jimmy’s new look on the clam shack
sign above the road, open in season four to midnight.
Gone against the glow of ballpark lights,
behind trees, crossing railroad tracks.
Will you look for the site
of your great-grandmother’s family
in the ground a mile away
near the mills they worked, now also gone?
“Look at the stars, look, where’s the moon?”
Isis threw grain into the night sky
and smeared the heavens like glitter,
igniting the Milky Way.
Nothing grew
except brighter.
Isis may have secretly
written poetry.
I am neither the chronicler of spring buds
on cottonwood branches, nor the compiler
of indices from international news sources.
I am he who ate Easter dinner
with family at his sister’s house,
waking up on the fold-out couch
with his wife, playing with our nephews
in our pajamas throughout the morning.
God love our secular family!
We made the drive back Sunday night
to our own small place in the city
making the turn into another work week,
a welcome respite of flannel sheets
and warm blankets, reading under the lamp.
It’s a shame the boys won’t remember themselves
at ages four and two
doing and saying things that amuse us.
If you were born just after the fall equinox
you may be inclined to study justice
and virtue. If you are a Libra and not so
inclined, no harm shall come to you.
Still, justice and virtue are worth a look.
The beginning whisper of crickets
could be rain hitting the street
softly, so soft, the slightest change
will give it away, and it’s only
my mind making meaning from sound
not the rain I want to come.
Daniel Bouchard’s third book, The Filaments was published by Zasterle Press in 2006. Others include Some Mountains Removed (Subpress, 2005) and Diminutive Revolutions (2000). He edits The Poker and lives in the Boston area.
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