Tohm Bakelas: "something they call home"

something they call home 

For a few hours, white snow 
fell before nightfall; then rain  
came and washed it all away.  
The lone streetlight on this 
dead end street, the one that  
often makes the poems, makes  
me think of Weldon Kees and  
his porchlight coming on. My  
neighbor, a miserable man who  
never waves, whose name I will 
never know, called the electric  
company about the streetlight’s  
stutter, about its blinking off 
and on from dusk to dawn. 
They came and fixed it when I 
was at work, when I wasn’t around.
And now it’s just a well-lit beacon,
birthing brightness upon this street,
guiding lost souls wet from rain,
towards something they call home.

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Tohm Bakelas is a social worker in a psychiatric hospital. He was born in New Jersey, resides there, and will die there. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including “Cleaning the Gutters of Hell (Zeitgeist Press, 2023) and “The Ants Crawl in Circles” (Bone Machine, Inc., 2024).
https://tohmbakelaspoetry.wordpress.com
Instagram: @flexyourhead