“Flight” Image by Pam Brodersen

I could have stood there all night     staring at the Torah ark in your bedroom

looking for clues to the future     a disclosure     but the relic was a relic adorned

with Christmas lights in a semi-legal living space on Ludlow Street     its wisdom

not for me   falling in love was like being on the verge of an accident     I had kept

to myself for so long     often losing     in order to     falling in love was like being

shut out of ideas     a delectable trap   disclosure also often an accident

The future says our nine-year old son

is a parallel universe    we are driving

down a tree-lined street     Did they keep wood from Jesus’s cross?

he wants to know     No I say     There were fingerprints on it, I bet     he says     Yes

Tina Cane is the founder and director of Writers-in-the-Schools, RI and is an instructor with the writing community, Frequency Providence. Her poems and translations have appeared in numerous publications, including The Literary Review, Two Serious Ladies, Tupelo Quarterly Jubliat and The Common. She is the author of The Fifth Thought (Other Painters Press, 2008), Dear Elena: Letters for Elena Ferrante, poems with art by Esther Solondz (Skillman Avenue Press, 2016) and Once More With Feeling (Veliz Books, 2017). In 2016, Tina received the Fellowship Merit Award in Poetry from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts. She currently serves as the Poet Laureate of Rhode Island, where she lives with her husband and their three children.