Produced by Dennis Camire
This week’s poem is by Jim Donnelly of Westbrook.
Harvesting Hearts . . .
(For Dennis Camire and Dave Moreau)
By Jim Donnelly
I’m harvesting hearts
at the all night gas and variety
and the dearth, despite the well-stocked shelves
of that thing most vital
we need for ourselves
our humanity
A Pavlovian bell at the entryway
the shadowy clerk hunkers down
with the snow squall and spray
and I greet my cultural kin
as another unfortunate
sidles in
The greying pony-tailed woman
cigarette-prone, poorly-paid
who like a young coquette nearly curtseys
thinking she’s in my way
pulling the bargain beer
from the display
Or the man in the backless slippers
his heels beet red from the cold
his shirt lopsidedly buttoned
a frayed fur-collared coat
we lock eyes for a moment
and something is summoned
up from the heart
and lodged in the throat
Or the bent frail woman with a kitten
(of all things)
telling me he’ll wail in her absence
so she brings him along
lest in her head is his sorrowful song
letting him wander the aisles
picking him up to blow
warm breath on his paws
shielding him in the folds
of her mackinaw
The clerk and I banter
after each straggler departs
with the last of his teeth he smiles
(he too has harvested hearts)
as the bell chime rings my exit
I make out their three silhouettes
figures in a snow globe
dim to what a child would see
the gas pumps, the road
the variety
a soft, suspended panoply
Dennis Camire can be reached at dcamire@cmcc.edu
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