There’s a light in the basement, on the rug
near the washing machine – coming
from the small television with Columbo
or Spider-man or whatever a kid
can watch and pretend
till there’s nothing
and no one –
there.

He’s a crippled superhero, an escape artist
hiding in a prison cell, a monster
bound with string – waiting at the bottom of the sea.

Wind twists around Catholic schools,
playgrounds, empty parking lots,
places he’ll never go again,
a bird trapped in ice,
a boy buried in snow.

Richard Wagle grew-up in Illinois along the Mississippi River. He has yet to leave the mid-west, having been educated in Iowa and Kansas and currently living with his wife and daughter in Ohio.