An anniversary poem for Michele

Gate after gate after gate after gate,
“All the way to heaven is heaven,”
Catherine once said—but she’s a saint
And we are only parents watching
Our children spin their clickers and scream
Expectantly for midnight’s chime.

When I proposed one New Year’s Eve
On a cold pier at Penn Treaty Park,
I begged the sky above the river
For kids with you, for years of you
Inside my coat, two souls entwined.

We tire, the four of us, from laughing
At this late hour. Clock hands unlock
The coming year with keys that fit
Gate after gate after gate after gate.

David Livewell grew up in Philadelphia and won the 2012 T.S. Eliot Award for Poetry for Shackamaxon (Truman State University Press). He is now at work on a second collection.

Shackamaxon Shackamaxon

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