A red blaze of neon stretches high in the misty rain
as droplets hit me with the freshness of absolution.
I’m free of the drum and trumpet of the ego,
for my blue blazer’s in the back of the car
with the paper I’ve just read at the colloquium—
yet any pretense that I’ll make a learned breakthrough
fades like the thinning light of this rosy cloud.
Whoever I am is local, for I’m not to be
one of those distinguished heads
wreathed clockwise on a page of the Milton Quarterly,
poised at a conference as festive cocktailers
over the glazed salmon of scholarship.
Hundreds of mediocrities accept their moist rank
every day, as, through the vast window
to the aisle just beyond the hemorrhoidal display,
I see the democracy of arch supports and the aspirin
I’m looking for.
Standing in the light
of the undeniably average, I feel whole again,
forgiven for missing the group photograph of eternity,
for I’m neither hungry, nor hurt, nor unemployed,
but thankful for merciful rain, this nimbus of neon,
and all the hemorrhoids of happiness.
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Home Pond
America
In the Parking Lot at Walgreen’s
Andrew Dillon