What Characters Do When We’re Away

by Howard Good
  
Lament the heaviness of hard covers,
envy those in the next chapter,
collect adverbs like superstitions,
toss a mini-football back and forth
on the white beach of the margin,
avoid looking at the page number,
know, if only for an instant
when recalling the cold breath
of hands on their skin, how it will end.


© 2007 by Howard Good. All rights reserved.

Howard Good, a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Death of the Frog Prince (2004) and Heartland (forthcoming), both from FootHills Publishing.