MOONBEAM

Every night
a different message.
Tell me tonight
about the translucent bones
of icicles on the gutter.
Their tale is a disclosure
of your stalking.
You enter as a burglar
on the heels of darkness
and leave no fingerprints,
yet cleverly steal away secrets
between the elusive shadows
you create,
some darker than others,
convoluted figures
rummaging in the most remote corners
of the room.
The sleepless await an explanation
but your peering eyes
slip away
when the clouds make you blink.
If you do take something,
no one is the wiser.
The sand in your light
eventually blinds into submission
the most suspicious
who, in the morning, awake inspired
yet unaware of your intrusion,
until the icicles drip
in the rising sunlight.



DIVERSION

He lies awake
during the small hours of quiet
after midnight and focuses upon
the husky rhythmic patterns of breath
which sustain her
in stark contrast
to the stillness of her soul
reflected on her face.

He wonders,
after sharing years of secure abandon,
about the first day he enters
this ritual of repose alone
should she render
to permanent slumber before him,
and realizes his ordinarily vivid imagination
dares not trespass

upon unfathomable ground.
Yet, he persists conjecture,
still unable to complete the thought
and as unnerving sensations invade his psyche,
he rises to write these lines
in hopeful diversion
to an inevitable confrontation
from his perspective or hers.



HOMELESS IN NYC

I crossed 42nd to get to Fifth
towards mid-town
and just paces in front of me
an old lady pushed a shopping cart
full of identity

bags of cans dangling
from each elbow
clanged as she waddled,
dressed in clothes
worse than a country scarecrow

though her straw gray hair
hung longer
tied in a tail with brown hosiery
to match her stoic, weathered face
and it pained my heart

when suddenly she squatted
in a deep knee bend
like she was picking
something off the sidewalk
and there she froze

as I quickly approached
to help
unaware of the problem
till a puddle formed
and its river flowed around my shoes

down the curb
and in the privacy of her mind
she transformed
my sympathy
to confused helplessness.

Michael Keshigian is a performing musician and college educator in Boston. His most recent publication credits include: California Quarterly, Pegasus, Red River Review, Oyez Review, Fairfield Review, and The Sierra Nevada College Review among many other online and written periodicals. He has 3 published chapbooks and 2 Pushcart nominations.