My Chains
I did not run off, but I walked off, believing that to be all right.
A comet was seen over north Florida and southern parts of Georgia
yesterday, reported by a mother-daughter pair driving west in a blue wagon.
“Eyes piercing the upper air like one in a dream”
—that’s Sojourner, a free woman, but equally true for this apparition, mother
and daughter agree. And it had a tail—this in bright afternoon—neither
superstitious, both scientific, they fear no ends yet
reject all explanations. It was not ___, it was not ___. The mother paints
a still life with field and comet, leaving out for simplicity any human sign, that sign
for peaches in the middle distance, one man bending over a dry stalk in a field,
any buried histories or groan from some escaping past. The daughter approves, and
so it is rendered, permanent. They didn’t name it. They watched it leave them in the sky.
Man with blood on his hands charged in Minneapolis stabbing.
Dance. A feeling of joy about life coming to the surface.
