Galileo in Arcetri

Ephemeris left open, transfixed by his blank gaze and one ancient ray arriving. Inside his blindness, a remembered sky: widdershins zodiac over the slanted campanile. The stones he’s thrown float up again, the vespers’ bells transpose themselves into a higher night now: neural carillon, signal fires across his darkening hemispheres: brief suns just touched with light from farther years. 

BIRD FEET by William Winfield Wright

If I had bird feet everything would be different.   I’d start paying attention to where I put myself,   lifting the knees like they say, going without shoes, leaving tracks.   I’d become comfortable in public conversation. “No, actually. I just woke up one day   and there they were looking up at me from the bottom of the bed.”   My strangeness would…

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Spring Wildflowers for an Executed Man by George Longenecker

For Robert Nelson Drew #755, Texas Department of Criminal Justice  Executed August 2, 1994, Huntsville, TX   Take a star flower, Robert, and ride its petals above the prison where they killed you. Pick golden thread and sew together your heart. Pick the mayflower and let its white petals blossom each year for what might have been. Take the lady’s slippers and fit them to…

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