After a Caravaggio Painting

We live in a city of weeping houses,

dogs howl, cats are skinny,

paint peels, times are hard.

Our souls reside in the dollar store,

we work and borrow monthly

to pay our debt. 

                          What do we owe?

Gamblers continue to gamble

even after the light shines

on the exchange of coins.

Who exchanges the solid for the light,

the light for the holy shine,

the shine that reveals the price tags,

the sale signs?

                        It’s past midnight,

the next day has cracked,

the city loud with the cawing

of cars and the old fashioned gurgle

of a polluted lake. See how we turn

towards the lake then away. 

We live

             in a city of weeping.

Our faces, scarred by the light

that resides in the coins,

the coins that cast their light up

towards the faces, tell me,

what do we owe?

                            To hear

the waves claw the polluted lake

and the dogs gurgle, to see

a hand point toward

that one face in the light,

the way the light is torn,

the turning again and again

towards the coin, faces lit up,

irritated, by all that we owe.

Sarah C. Harwell has had poems published in various journals including Poetry, TriQuarterly, Stone Canoe and Margie.  She is one of the featured poets in Three New Poets published by Sheep Meadow Press, 2006.  She has worked as a bed and breakfast hostess, librarian, natural language processor and telephone psychic, and is utilizing many of those skills in her current job as coordinator and instructor in Syracuse University’s Creative Writing MFA program.  She lives in Syracuse with her daughter and cat.

Photograph accompanying poem, “Night Shift,” by Bob Gates.