It’s National Poetry Day (in the UK) and to celebrate, I’m posting a poem from my book, The Blue Line Home.  If you haven’t ordered your copy yet, today might be a good day!

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Tired of Looking for Signs like These

I face Lake Michigan
on a bridge,
water flat as vowels
on the busy traffic of tongues.
Standing between us
are buildings built like blips

on a heart monitor.
Across the street
factory smoke bellows
out like a big grey belly.
I turn, a suit tightens
a half-windsor

and keycodes a condo door.
Above the skyline
embers settle into the stretch.
A man metal-carts groceries
into the entrance
of a project building.

I have always been of this city,
understood
when losing my way
I’d be carried back.
The air is bruised,
bares the marks of old industry

and taxi horns
where once were rail cars.
All the parts of this city
are moving and this moment
is caught in its throat.
I am passed up—

a shadow
in the street lamp.
The intersection
of my connectedness,
present and quiet as black
gum spots on curbs.