James Kangas
​Image by Helen Cramer from Unsplash                                                                                       
James Kangas is a retired librarian and musician living in Flint, Michigan. His poems have appeared in Atlanta Review, Faultline, The New York Quarterly, The Penn Review, and West Branch, among others. His chapbook, Breath of Eden (Sibling Rivalry Press) appeared in 2019.
Moonlight


Going out to put the trash bag
at the curb, I saw the dawn

December sky, the moon
in the west through a scrim

of clouds, and then a window
of cloudlessness, not a wisp

of vapor between us.
Another cloud edge; soon

the window had passed. Two
minutes in the cold, I saw

my life: its murk and happen-so
of days; lunacy, hunger, lost

in so many drop-dead faces,
the fever of wanting to touch

the stars, each old best closeness,

and you. Saw too
the day looming, empty,

veils between us.






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