Our pockets full of stones, we went in search

of the needle in the haystack, the one

the undertaker uses to prick your neck

the surgeon to administer his ether,

x

the night to blacken its windows.

It’s the blue one tipped with blood,

and the eye through which you chase

the dragon, the shining cells of the serpent,

x

ants and flies for company. We never

found the needle, but the eye started turning

up everywhere—in the vest pocket of the bum

sleeping on a bench in the freezing rain,

x

in the keyholes on death row, in the nets

dragging the river for loose change,

a lens through which we read

the fine print, the toppled gravestones.

x

The writing on the wall.

x

x

Richard Hedderman has had poems in The American Journal of Poetry, Rattle, Chicago Quarterly Review, Chautauqua Literary Review, Kestrel, Skald(Wales), The Midwest Quarterly, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, and elsewhere. He is a multiple Pushcart Prize nominee and has served as a guest poet at the Library of Congress. He is currently the Writer-in-Residence at the Milwaukee Public Museum.