“December 31st” by Don Hogle

I drove across the Flagler Memorial Bridge
with a scarlet sun setting in my eyes
like red-winged thrushes fluttering in a pine
scrub forest. Turning onto the highway,
the streets were familiar yet strangely new;
light on the faux-stucco walls of a strip mall
broke into pinks and lavenders.

The world is a grand machine, isn’t it, Alex,
building, rending and rearranging itself?
Turbine tides never cease rolling, the stars whirl
across the sky, and if I reach for your hand
now, it’s because I’m hurtling forward
with the sun in my eyes, and it comforts me
to recall your pillowed palm.

In the Paris church of Saint-Eustache,
there was a sculpture––The Departure of Fruits
and Vegetables from the Heart of Paris––
that bore witness to the final closing
of the produce markets at Les Halles:
artichokes, cauliflowers, bok choy in baskets;
the grocers’ stoic faces, a hand-drawn cart.

Don Hogle’s poetry has appeared recently in Apalachee Review, Atlanta Review, Carolina Quarterly, Chautauqua, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and others. He received an Honorable Mention for the 2018 E. E. Cummings Prize from the New England Poetry Club. A chapbook, Madagascar, will be published by Sevens Kitchens Press in spring 2020. He lives in Manhattan. www.donhoglepoet.com