Poetry by Brian C. Billings
We were in Baltimore in March at night,
and when we walked along the harbor road,
my husband gushed about the play of light
that limned the buildings on our left. He slowed
us down and stepped into the glow, but I
went right instead to where a willow oak
was draped across a coffee shop, and high
upon the slender limbs were shards, bespoke
divisions from a sheet of mirrored glass
that swayed and rippled in the bitter breeze
and gave a millionfold a candle mass
in gold and green and silver flame. Oh, please,
don’t let my husband see. I knew he’d sneer
and break the hope inside the chandelier.
Brian C. Billings is a professor of drama and English at Texas A&M University-Texarkana. His work has appeared in such journals as Abandoned Mine, The Bluebird Word, Confrontation, Evening Street Review, Glacial Hills Review, and Poems and Plays. Publishers for his scripts include Eldridge Publishing and Heuer Publishing.
