A Poem Too Good Not To Share

PACKET
by Jamie Ross

A green light that comes
when you never saw it coming, never
heard it, felt it, but you knew it

like the woman in the sandlot
behind Abram's Grill
who's just lost her lenses,
on her hands and knees, her
hair cut short but seems as if
it's flowing, and the rush
on her throat like a rise
from birth, the music in the car

as the engine goes silent
while you fold down a seat
for the stashed beam lantern
with it's yellow plastic grip, six
Ray-O-Vacs, the
movement in the trees
beyond Lake Michigan. It's

a wave like that
when the wind gets lost
and the mail-boat from Racine, three
hours late, cracks into a tanker,
where the crew, like you, has
waited on the decks, in the hold
for two months out, to send

a message home—or to get a
certain scent, for just one instant,
of weeds, in the dirt, the both

of you groping.