through a long stairway of splintered wood
worn glossy black where heels
long ago chipped away
the white paint and shoes dragged
down to the concrete-
floored basement.
Heavy light dropped bars
of metallic dust.
He would have liked a poem of glass
and plush white carpet,
cantilevered
over the Aegean
antiquity perched
on an island across
a diamond-studded bay.
But the poem he had entered was the only one
open that day
after a deafening sixth period class and a long
walk through
Vermilion Cliffs Trailer Court under the intense
Arizona sun,
poverty sweltering like puss. So he did what
only he could do,
which is not much. He added a stanza
An aquarium of glass water,
silver fishes swimming through soft light.
He almost transcended.
© 2010 by Steve Brown
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