And the Sky

I felt suddenly like Walt Whitman last night
in the parking lot of Rainbow Foods,
still dazzled from a poetry reading I’d attended,
fresh ponds of rain shining between cars.
I smiled at a boy pushing shopping carts,
he smiled back, it was wonderful!
Inside, I watched a man with dreadlocks
carefully bag the cookies he bought.
I observed four brown-eyed children
unload a paycheck’s worth of groceries for their mother.
Listen, I know we’re all of us hiding bruises,
but when a veil seems to lift, it doesn’t always reveal sorrow.
I saw ordinary people holding doors for each other, saying please,
and the sky, when I left, was incredibly lavender.

(This is from my full-length book, Rain, Lilies, Luck, and was first published in Main Channel Voices.)