“Miracles”

by Art Nahill

Melissa Manning. Eleventh grade. My hand
inside the holy tabernacle of her blouse.

The way my father worked
the same job forty years, rising

before the alarm each morning; each evening,
the fastidious arrangement of tomorrow's clothes.

The New York Mets of 1969.
The Blizzard of '78.

The way the final act of Puccini's Tosca
can make me miss what I've not yet lost.

The city this morning rising to a muslin
of March snow, scrim of ice out on the river.

Dread-locked busker at Downtown Crossing,
his reggae cover of Stairway to Heaven .

The lovers on the seven-thirty train,
oblivious to the rest of us,

his hand pressed into the hollow of her
back, her body's quiet accommodations;

the tongue, its capacity
for tenderness.