A Month of Sundays

Kathleen Hellen

In the exaggerated light of perigee 

 I pitter-patter to the bus stop in my flip-flops. 

 The minute lengthening like a fenced-in shadow on 

 a lit-up field ... the diamond sparkling, the trees like silent sentries 

 I can count on when a truck comes up, its headlights ducking between 

 houses with their lights on, lighting up the boys in gangs of three 

 who toss the football, a joke or two. I speak their language with a nod up, 

 the way it ought to be, never down, never chin tucked under. 

 We do it right tonight. No forgeries. No rock and dust in samples 

 auctioned off. The moon's a base ... or so it seemed ... when was it? 

 years ago ... a man walked on the chalked and cratered surface of TV 

 and seized the flicker of the future, like a baseball thrown and stuck 

 in some belief. A flag planted, light-yeared on what's noble. 

 Michael Jackson's Walk not jive hallucination. 

 I follow in the footprints, in orange imitation 

 of a streetlight. I give all my hopes to seas 

 of cold serenity, The Man in Cheese 

 or to a rabbit rice-cake-making. 

 I take the bus to somewhere on 

 the near side of the pie.