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/.

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