Anthony Thomas Lombardi

The Heron

the coffee maker’s clean light blinks
there’s mold in the ceiling
i’m waiting for the phone to ring
someone calls or someone doesn’t call
a package comes or doesn’t come
there’s a draft from the doorway
there’s a draft in the kitchen
i’m not that spiritual
i still go to the supermarket
the line moves slowly
the line in that leonard cohen song
makes me cry
new york is cold but beautiful
the frost on the sidewalks
envies the frost on the eaves
i’m slicing bruises from a pear
the knife kisses my palm
sometimes people’s kindness
overwhelms me
the pills seem to be working
the pills don’t seem to be working
the church bells are pealing
for the eager-to-please
the azaleas in central park bloom
like azaleas
i mistake an egret for a heron
a landing parachute
for your hard silver gait

 
which is just to say yes
i am still looking for mercy
between the winged sky & the ground
beginning to draw near

do you see it—

Anthony Thomas Lombardi is a Brooklyn-based, Pushcart-nominated poet, organizer, activist, and educator. He is the founder and director of Word is Bond, a community-centered reading series partnered with AAWW that benefits transnational relief efforts and mutual aid organizations, and currently serves as assistant poetry editor for Sundog Lit. A recipient of the Poetry Project’s Emerge-Surface-Be Fellowship, his work has appeared or will soon in Guernica, Gulf Coast, Colorado Review, North American Review, THRUSH, and elsewhere. His favorite sweet would be vegan cherry pie with coffee, black as midnight on a moonless night—his existence merely a recreation of Twin Peaks.