A Poem for Sunday

Ralph Angel's "In Every Direction"

Way back when I studied at the University of Cincinnati, I had the profound pleasure of meeting Ralph Angel and hearing him read. The dream-like poems and reading strongly connected with me on levels I can’t quite articulate, and since that night I’ve loved Angel’s work. His poems always feel like a combination of ease with a touch of magic hovering around the margins, bouncing on the screens. Happy Sunday everyone.

In Every Direction
     by Ralph Angel

As if you actually died in that dream
and woke up dead. Shadows of untangling vines
tumble toward the ceiling. A delicate
lizard sits on your shoulder, its eyes
blinking in every direction.

And when you lean forward and present your
hands to the basin of water, and glimpse the glass face
that is reflected there, it seems perfectly at home
beneath the surface, about as unnatural
as nature forcing everyone to face the music
with so much left to do, with everything
that could be done better tomorrow, to dance
the slow shuffle of decay.

Only one season becoming another,
continents traveling the skyway, the grass
breathing. And townspeople, victims, murderers,
the gold-colored straw and barbed-wire hair of the world
wafting over the furrows, the slashed roads
to the door of your office or into the living room.

The towel is warm and cool, soft to the touch,
but in another dream altogether
a screen door creaks open, slams shut,
and across the valley a car's headlights swing up
and over. And maybe you are the driver
with both hands on the wheel, humming a tune
nobody's ever heard before,

or maybe the woman on the edge of the porch,
grown quiet from fleeing,
tough as nails.

Blue Willow’s rendering of this poem’s text when used as a prompt for image generation