Our Fresh Local Lit series serves up poems and prose by Philadelphians twice a week. Today’s poem was pulled from the archives! Steve Burke’s piece H, was originally printed in APIARY’s 1st Online Issue.
H
Head down in the cold, I can still tell when I’m passing neighbor-Connie’s:
from the cigarette butts in the street – the way we can tell
where the sun reaches least: from the lingering ice, as at the bus stop.
Last night I dreamt of a seizure disorder, if not benign
then at least not threatening, a prospect of healing somehow
in it clearly moving from character to vague dream-characteras if it were a party game: Musical Chairs. Pass-The-Orange.
A seat gained, the comfort of an orange snug beneath the chin.
But this morning, anything but dream-like, demands attention –
in the unsure footing, in the chill, but especially in the brightness
of the three-quarter moon – all convexity, but at least a light at
which we can stare…And suddenly I am glad I am on my way
to work, am warmed by this: my exhalations a vow of silence visible,
my head empty as a light bulb in a closed refrigerator. Or not empty,
maybe just full of this: cold, dark, and an insistent hum.
Johannes Kepler, seventeenth-century astronomer, one clear night
while working with concave mirrors feels moon-warmth
on the back of one hand. “I involuntarily turned around to see whether
someone was breathing on my hand.” Think of it as this: Kepler waking
in bed to find that he’s tossed one hand near the mouth of a sleeping,
unexpected lover: a lover once considered as distant as that moon.
And, think of this: that maybe we are irregularly contoured, cupped
and curved so we can throw off, take in, as we do so much else, warmth.
But all this speculation must cease, as the H, a shoebox of light,
rolls up to the curb, its door opening up, without thought, in welcome.
STEVE BURKE has been published in the Mad Poets Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, and Spitball. He has been a featured reader at the Free Library’s Monday Series, the Big Blue Marble Bookstore, the Green Line Poetry Series, & the original Painted Bride Gallery. He lives in the Mount Airy section of Philadelphia with wife-Giselle and daughter-Mariah and has worked for many years as a labor and delivery nurse.
