Two Poems by Jennifer L Freed

Heavy Clouds

On the morning radio, our nation
breaks softly on the news.
Upstairs, the tile guy is singing
off-key as he works on the bathroom floor.
He warned us before he started, “Hope
you don’t mind my old songs.
It’s how I get through the days.”
Snatches of his voice float down to my desk, lift
my mood.

When I go for a walk, I stop to watch
a robin perched atop a hedge. He lets me get close
enough to see his chest move when he chirps,
close enough to see him pluck a red berry,
lift up his chin, let it roll down his throat.
A bent, leathery man in a MAGA cap
stops beside me, and the robin turns an onyx eye
to watch us watching, and the man and I smile
at each other. He says, “Such little things
brighten my day.”

I want to believe this is a good sign.
But I don’t believe in signs.
Lately, I find in myself a new impulse
to guard my tongue, my text messages.
Years ago, in Prague, I met a woman
who turned on her kitchen tap before whispering
her opinions. I met a man
who’d been jailed in his youth
for performing “degenerate” songs.

I wish I could still hear Tile Guy
singing his way through the day.
But he’s clumping down the stairs now,
going out to his battered truck for a smoke.
He leans against the hood, takes a long drag,
gazes up at the empty blue sky.

*

Geometry 350: Questions of Repair

          for Alessandra

If the January light is cold and clear, and the man
with the cardboard sign at the intersection
of Pleasant and Main seems close
to tears when you hand him the twenty
your mother just gave you,
what is the volume of his words
when he says he’s been waiting
for something good to happen
since his boots were stolen while he slept?

And what is the measure of your gaze
greeting his, staying long enough
for him to tell you he borrowed
a pair of size sevens, but his feet
are size nine, and he couldn’t
keep walking, so thank you, thank you, this
makes his day.

And if you now see his stocking feet,
how he lifts them in turns
off the concrete as he speaks,
what is the circumference of the afternoon
yawning wide and idle ahead of you?

If, an hour later, the man is still there, still working
his way down the street in his socks
as the sun withdraws and the ice
tightens its grip on the sidewalks,
what will be the trajectory of your voice
calling, Sir! Sir! till he turns, and you say,
You’re size nine, right?
and his eyes take in the bag
you are holding out toward him.

*

Jennifer L Freed’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Atlanta Review, Writers Resist, Bellevue Literary Review, ONE ART, and other journals. Her collection When Light Shifts (finalist, 2022 Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize) explores themes of identity, health, care-giving and parent-care in the aftermath of her mother’s cerebral hemorrhage. She teaches writing programs from Massachusetts. Please visit jfreed.weebly.com