The stain-glassed rosette
on the First Baptist hangs
like a bloodshot eye,
a glowing bead around
the corner from the Gas-n-Go.
The well-lit heart of this town,
main street, and time of night
draws all kinds in for kerosene,
an Icee, some peanuts,
and rotates them back
out towards the red light
and the pried open eye.

A man, stubble and cap,
knees pumping loosely in front
of his chest, wobbles on his son’s
bicycle. Two fingers steer
the handlebar, the other hand
balances a gallon of milk.
He relaxes in the seat,
in the fresh fall night, and rolls
past the eye, past laced iron
fences and the mill-cranked smoke
that hangs and lasts in the sky
like cobwebs; past a yappy dog

to his front porch that looks
like everyone else’s, his house another
A-shape in a this gape-faced
choir. He rests in his off-work smile
and laugh lines that will vaporize
with routined morning, when the eye
becomes a ruby, when he squints
at the sun, when the cobwebs
confine him to ordinariness
and ordered heartbeats.