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      June 22, 2018Going BigBob Hicok

      For Hanukkah,
      for my wife, I tried putting candles
      on the antlers of deer.
      It’s not that I believe in God:
      I believe in light, and deer,
      and a man pulling his weight
      in the adaptation of the species.
      I believe antlers
      the most natural menorah,
      in a twelve point buck
      glowing in falling snow, in hunters
      dropping their rifles to their sides,
      in the cool air
      cupping our faces in its hands.
      To say it didn’t work is to miss
      that I got to know how to wait
      for deer, which is different
      than waiting for bear, or love,
      or a phrase of sufficient tenderness
      to capture the evanescence of life
      to arrive, and last beyond the feeling
      nothing lasts.
      Light lasts.
      Light runs and runs
      without tiring or giving up, the universe
      is bigger now, and now, and now,
      just as intimacy grows
      when my wife lights candles
      with a scarf over her head,
      holds her hands up to the light
      while repeating a prayer
      repeated millions of times,
      adding to the distance
      the words have traveled
      and the complicated life
      they’ve lived, and better still,
      reminding me there’s a bloom
      in her face only I can see
      in this light, so yes,
      I know what luck is.

      from #59 - Spring 2018

      Bob Hicok

      “I like starting poems. After I start a poem, I like getting to the middle, and after the middle, an end seems a good thing to reach. When the end is reached, I like doing everything that isn’t writing poems, until the next day, when my desk is exactly where I left it, though I am a slightly different person than the last time we met.”