First Thought
____________________________________

Yesterday the rain stopped in time
for the sun to appear before it went down
across the river in New Jersey.
Where I sat, I watched the filthy brick work
become velvet and the pointy nipples of the water towers
go black a little before the rest of the world.
I no longer own much.
To look is to give up what you are looking at.
And the mind takes on the exact shape of each thought.
The junked ambulances people have died in
at great speed sleep at the end of the block.
The preserved head of a saint
is placed behind glass at the altar in Drogheda
where it still stares into the one thought
that entered its mind at the moment of death.
Darkness has no form of its own
and is as soundless as mending.

 

 

From Ocean Avenue by Malena Morling

New Issues Poetry & Prose, Western Michigan University, Dept. of English,
1903 W. Michigan Ave., Kalamazoo, MI 49008-5331
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