(Bruno Martins/Unsplash)

What went on in that head?
Sometimes a breeze blew
lifting a little glitter
as snow resettles a ledge.
He certainly wasn’t that girl
sweeping past in an azure frock.
Those firemen in high boots.

Who would he be at the end
when his breezes all lay down
like impalas in the dusk?
They’d say he’d been a thing
and now was something else.
Only, what had gone on in his head?
He’d kept that under his hat.

Don Barkin has published poems in Poetry, the Virginia Quarterly Review, Poetry Northwest, Commonweal, Prairie Schooner, and other magazines. He is the author of three full-length books of poems, That Dark Lake (2009), Houses (2017), and The Rail Stop at Wassaic (2020).

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Published in the July/August 2024 issue: View Contents
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