Captivity

Lionel Kearns
From:   Ignoring the Bomb. Lantzville: Oolichan Press, 1982.

How falling snow takes a town at night
in its muffle, takes you, too,
standing there under the street light
alone watching giant shadows silently
crash down. And you stay there so long
your ears pick up the tiny tinkle-tink-tink
above you of snowflakes breaking
on the metal lamp-shade. Squeak-slap
squeak-slap squeak-slap someone
in galoshes walks by then fades utterly
into the thickness of whiteness
of darkness. Snowflakes falling
on your face, melting in your eyes,
filling your footprints with stillness.
Two streets away a truck with loose chains
clanks rhythmically into soft oblivion.

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Lionel Kearns's works copyright © to the author.