print previewback HENRY HART
Anniversary in the Lookout Tower
You break a baguette, uncork a bottle
of Merlot, toast the sun bleeding through
the horizon’s blaze of trees.
I touch the topaz stars
around your neck, the amber moon
dangling at your ear.
From this perch, we can’t see
Sandy Hook, only its hills tilting
like gravestones down the valley.
You wave your cup and say
to a crow squawking on its pine branch:
You’d never do a thing like that.
Night dusts with pink the veined,
darkened clouds and now the luna moth
spiraling through the roof’s trapdoor.
It floats to my hand, clutches
my ring in its small talons.
You point to the golden eyes
ringed with black on its wings,
talk about souls flying out
from the mouths of the dead.
I lean over the tower’s barbed wire
fence and gently shake my hand.
The moth flutters into the shadows. 
Anniversary on the Lookout Tower
A Teacher’s
Story