Northern Milwaukee Poem by Bernard Henrie

A new star in the Negro sky, wafer blue light
the shade of mother's aged and bleached eyes
as she convalesces beside me restless and frail.

A beam clean as though just washed falls across
the Ford Dealership where it lingers over row
after row of new cars.

The track moving at great speed crosses west
of Canis Major the rough dog star of Jesus.
North Milwaukee, the Antarctic, South Georgia
Island where penguins in great flocks look up.

A white dwarf in a million years; I ask mother
if this is enough eternity, but the oxygen under
her mask is sweet, the answer confined to the
Hellenic sleep of Persephone chloroformed in Hades.