Literary interlude

Mass Cards #17

As to what

                        is left

that is our only

way home over what is already gone

to a painted head

of Alexander Hamilton

                                    hanging

inside clouds about the falls

on the walls of a car­toon bank

            our way out

of not know­ing what body is missing

to restore noth­ing that can be named

as they are a pray­er, no longer left to us

and all that might be sun in late November

glow­ing gold and crim­son in the bend of a

few trees singing with birds on Cianci Street

and feel the warmth on this window

just heat­ing up before a road to St. Michael’s

            church

the screens of the jail and a star a thousand

years above Paterson

—Michael Reardon

From the antho­logy A Place Like Paterson, edited by June Avignone, Lincoln Springs Press, 1992