Gaetan Sgro
1210 AM hurry back to the house. believe it’s evening again. tea on the porch, and the ballgame. incense of trees, grass clippings. how to surf a radio wave. hearing without listening. capture everything between. breaks in a blanket of sound. and the warm static stretching. years on, everything will change. Canada Little one, you cannot know how distance carves my heart planted here, so far from your daddy’s native soil. how your noise box mimes the rush of air through slat fence humming sounds that quiet you but pick at me like chilly wind a melody of urgency, of outside looking in. how your infant squawks that honk and draw the shade of morning over night are casting shadows like nets, flickers of static crackling across endless fields. Morning, Avalon The older I get the more I long for. A screened-in porch enclosure. A dewy tangle of moss rose, portulaca. Innocent of what comes after. A trash truck’s clumsy rumbling. The vacancy of beaches in morning. Pig weed, nestled in hanging baskets. Pushing through cracks in pavement. That day we got lost in the gardens. And you rocking all of the baskets. How could I guess what your arms meant? Gaetan Sgro is a writer and a physician who appreciates negative space and the way Hopper painted sunlight.