Central Park Falls Into Aimless Light Poem by Bernard Henrie

The last heavy pigeons role
onto their backs and land.
Summer stars fixed like punctuation
in a child's tablet.

Romanos for roof dancing; the Tiki lamps
look over with yellow eyes.

Your vast redness at the toes and mouth,
a great bang of hair over one cheek,
your silhouette in the fleur-de-lis mirror.

A wine I don't recall, a plate 100 years old.
Dancing. Ja-Da. The stars, clean and white
as teeth in a kitten's mouth.

Stars with white silk scarfs look
from airline windows, gaze from train
windows who never speak.

Driving home along the Hudson, a stray policeman
on a horse. Our pantry and fixed photographs
of aging children; the white noise of all night
radio. Two fingers of Gibson's Dry in a toothpaste
glass;

I speak something from my heart, the closer stars
lean in to hear every word.