Lawrence Wray: Stonehouse Alms

I find the bench as I left it a week ago, vacant
but for sunlight that flutters, fades or brightens
as the trees blow. Across the grassy meadow
flamingoes stand in absolutely fluent attention
at the aviary’s glass walls. In the coming winter
their tropical enclosure will be surrounded by snow
Confederate boys walked in at that site, round
and round a small fire in the heart of their prison;
the flamingoes like pale reflections, the sheen
on frost that speaks of impassable distance.
On this mid-October afternoon – no job,
no fear of hunger for now or frostbite’s black toes
and flush cheeks, no reason to keep a grudge –
I am idle, out of place again, and discontent.
I will begin to hide notes in every dilapidation.
You are still being stalked by misused shadows.
Gas station lavatories, philosophies at the library,
parking garage stairwells. The ground crawls away
at night to lie with the river as do you in dreams.
Way off near the old prison a train whistles.
The tracks, close by, are waiting to be a bridge.
Beside them, the stonehouse is chained
and fluttering. In tiny script, names
cover the inside walls – those who were willing
to use you and those who colluded.
The list is incompleteable and full of sorrow.
The sheet music I found in the gutter smeared
with rain, I hum the tune softly as I walk home.
There is in me a traipsing line of ragged men
I can’t ignore. Grass stalks dangle from chinks
in the house’s mortar by the caged window.
I’ll wedge my notes into the gaps. One day, here
and there, if the notes are opened and read,
the hands that drop them to the dirt, the sidewalk,
or shove slips into a pocket and carry them
to other cities, where they might collect at last
like stiff trash stuck to a chain-link fence
by a highway, those hands will recognize how
incongruous, flawed our times are, only a few
words legible by then, stalked or lie and dreams. 
~~~~

Lawrence Wray is a poet, teacher and activist who lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His collections of poetry include The Wavering Fledge of Light (Wipf and Stock, 2023).

Copyright 2025 Lawrence Wray