Jack Galmitz

Queens County Morning

A painter might
Daub his brush to canvas
With pea-green pigment
& make it spring.
With bolder stroke of burnt umber,
Shades of sienna,
A fine white border added,
Sunlight would settle on the bole of a tree.
Dawn came to me in my fingers
Curled on the rocking-chair arms
On the porch creaking
As I watched the steel girders
Of the train tressle shudder
Into morning.

A shout from the street,
An old motor sputtered,
A friend came to a friend
To drive him to work.
The saffron-colored church steeple
Was discovered by the sun.
A train of seagulls & black faced terns lifted
Like maidens-in-waiting
From the roofs to begin another day’s
Search in the service of truth.

The progress of the light turned
With every movement,
Flashed from antennas,
Lodged in the blue pantiles of the Thailand temple,
Rested in the mica-spangled pavement.

Slowly, the world grew
As seedlings planted
Divided equally into right & left,
Indistinguishable from other lives
In their beginnings.