by Richard Levine
For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool,
and troubled the water: John, 5:4
I can’t baptize or immunize you
with my nod or smile, passing in this
pig-pink rural town, where your skin
is as double-take out-of-place
as the blood-colored tears
on a waxwing’s shoulders.
And you don’t need protection to walk
here, nor anyone’s approval. But you know,
easy as catching a cold or rain on cloudy days,
a chance of hate might be in your forecast
anywhere you go. And even if justice shines
on our back door someday, we’ll still need
an umbrella for that rain that falls on only one side
of a street, like a wall with loneliness on both.
Richard Levine is the author of Taming the Hours: An Almanac with Marginalia, Now in Contest (Fernwood Press, 2023), Selected Poems (FutureCycle Press, 2019), Contiguous States (Finishing Line Press, 2018), and five chapbooks, including A Tide of a Hundred Mountains (Bright Hill Press, 2012), winner of the 2012 Bright Hill Chapbook Prize. An Advisory Editor of BigCityLit.com and co-editor of Invasion of Ukraine 2022: Poems, he received the 2021 Connecticut Poetry Society Award. His poetry appears on the websites of American Life in Poetry, Poetry Foundation and the American Academy of Poets. A Vietnam veteran, his work is archived in LaSalle University’s Special Collections Library.
Website: richardlevine107.com.