JOSEPH MILLAR

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April Eclipse​

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 for Willy V

When it comes to the American songbook

you can’t see the flame but it’s burning

everywhere this time of year.

It might appear at the edge of the mind

like a cobalt heart, a fresh tattoo.

And this is no time for thinking of snow

or the rain’s wet ropes of shadow

falling on San Pablo Avenue. 

They say the darkness covering the sun

marks something new and something gone—

the small poetry presses overnight,

books being changed to invisible print— 

like the song your friend wrote

with its pedal steel 

which he called The Imperial

so you think it will be about a car,

but instead it’s about a love affair

afternoons in a big motel

and a convict’s girlfriend saying goodbye, 

that she’s married someone else.

Joseph Millar’s poems arise from the currents of felt experience: work, love, filial connection, poems of life and death. His work has won fellowships from the NEA and the Guggenheim Foundation. Shine is his sixth collection. He teaches in Pacific University’s low residency MFA and lives in Richmond, CA.

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