on the wing

Passing Time 

Damon draws my coffee Thursday

afternoons, leaves a hat band of white

space at the top for cream, dashes off

the galaxy of a cookie to balance

this still life.  Sometimes he adds a yawning

wing back chair in the lower left hand

corner, yellow, straight from the tube

that appears to float in space between

a scumble of rug and gunmetal smudge

passing overhead, framed in skylight

panes, March toning pages of a book

lovingly rendered in the rough

sketch of my hands, enameled

medallions of reading glasses fixing

two languid women printing fat

slices of blood orange on stem ware

blue-tipped match heads of students

flaring here and there, a docent

dozing on his break, tight smile of blue

blazer beholding the rise and fall

of a vast landscape, time passing

even for the Van Gogh waiting  

for me upstairs, deep veins clogged

with wet pigment, passing time

on a wall still waiting for a cure

spending what’s left of mine waltzing

a gaze across William Merritt Chase

himself, forever emerging from shadow

snowy petals of a flower fresh in his lapel

eyes piercing above the great outstretched

wings of moustache, searching my face

in the final moments before flight.