As if crying
By Patrick T. Reardon
.
Month money envelopes,
unlabeled something cans,
irregulared clothing,
big boy, little kids, duty.
.
Shoes on sideboard,
morning machine.
Line up, line down.
.
Church altar, gold, silver,
cryptic incense language,
holy storm organ,
big boy, gowned, bowed with Latin,
little kids.
.
Face to hands after Communion,
like the men, as if crying.
.
Signboard jungle playground,
dirt field, alley junking.
Concrete garbage playground,
white shirt streaked emerging,
crab-appled.
.
Blacktop lot, scoured gray-white,
wind, feet, rain, creviced,
shards of one hundred million bottles,
brown, green, clear,
constellation in morning sun,
cosmos in angled light refracted,
.
throne of heaven.
.
Patrick T. Reardon
6.30.22
This poem originally appeared in After Hours, Winter 2021.
Written by : Patrick T. Reardon
For more than three decades Patrick T. Reardon was an urban affairs writer, a feature writer, a columnist, and an editor for the Chicago Tribune. In 2000 he was one of a team of 50 staff members who won a Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting. Now a freelance writer and poet, he has contributed chapters to several books and is the author of Faith Stripped to Its Essence. His website is https://patricktreardon.com/.