Senior Center
Light here is old, suspended
cloudy, from the cathedral ceiling,
far above the somehow brighter sheen
of its reflection on the checkered
linoleum, on the backing
and thick legs of the metal chairs
around the bridge tables,
the mah jong tables, the bingo tables—
light stumbles, it seems, it gropes,
not so much from the weight of night
against it through the sun roof
and the giant windows
as from the far off
shining of itself
outside itself
in chairs and tables
and all across the white
checks and the black checks,
as if the source of light,
the secret, were not in light at all
but in these brighter traces
which it reaches for
the way the blind do,
baffled, feeling
the smooth braille
of every surface
for the light encrypted
sense of what’s
unreadable and clear.
Alan Shapiro’s most recent book, “Old War,” was published by Houghton Mifflin in 2008. This poem is from his forthcoming “Night of the Republic.”
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