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ADAM TAVEL | Orphan Lights

April 27, 2019 Hawaiʻi Review
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Two Fathers packed us shivering

into the rectory’s station wagon

where our stuttered breaths fogged

windows spider-webbed with frost.

I rubbed circles with my sleeve

to see the cemetery angel glisten

above a mound so fresh it wore

no weeds. We left streetlamps

hovering like rotten nectarines

to creep through Harmony

Estates, where all the strands

arched rainbows over doors

and bushes trimmed to orbs.

I liked the plain lights best—

shimmering against eggshell

shutters or spiraling on reindeer

frozen in their ready rear

for flight. Comet and Cupid

rang inside my head, repeating

like plastic mangers where

every weary Joseph bowed

before a swaddled blue cocoon.

Timothy, our newest boy, kept

glancing backward at the miles

and mound the darkness held

where his handprints starred dirt.

His face turned alabaster

each time a coughing fit

bent him like a shepherd.

I wondered if the Holy Spirit hid

among oxen, or sheep, or flew

from bulb to bulb, blessing each

porch’s wreath ribbon and risen

house number tacked in brass

impossible to tell inside the glow.


Adam Tavel won the 2017 Richard Wilbur Book Award for Catafalque, his third book of poems (University of Evansville Press, 2018). You can find him online at https://adamtavel.com/.

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