Letter to Joe Arcangelini, On Another Coast
The coffee was delicious and the rain is good to see.
Add enough mornings, get a long life.
Is fake profundity what you meant to wake to?
Some mornings, the nearly true is all I can manage.
I look out the window and wait.
Hard rain scattered the birds.
How bare is the shelter of a leafless tree?
A little less than necessary, little more than nothing.
If you think absence tastes like air, you haven’t breathed here.
The factories closed years ago, an old odor stays.
The blanket sky is tattered in gray places.
That blanket is older than today.
The clouds look younger and younger.
Mike James lives and works in Murfreesboro, TN. Recent poems have appeared in Asheville Poetry Review, Main Street Rag, San Pedro Review, and Laurel Poetry Review. His fifteenth collection, Journeyman’s Suitcase, was recently published by Luchador Press. He served as an associate editor for the Kentucky Review and as an associate editor for Autumn House Press. He currently serves as an associate editor for the prose poem journal Unbroken.
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