Neighbors’ faces lit by blue
screens.    Junkies? Angels?
 
I want to say the latter
although I’ve never heard
 
of sports bras in all the iconography
or miraculous accounts of folks being
 
saved for a larger purpose which I can
hardly imagine as I carry my daughter
 
who cannot sleep onto the dark porch and up
the sidewalk in my arms       my arms
 
which do this with numb customary strength
and if     if they are     they are angels
 
then the yellow slit of refrigerator light
must be the gates opening wide to take them
 
back to wherever it is that would leave us
bereft and I know the world will be different
 
when they are finally gone—the yew trees
outside their windows, for instance.
 
Same trees. Same trees, in different light.