More poetry

I asked John Ahearn if I could post another of his poems. Here's what he said:

To answer your question, I'd feel exposed, racked by anxiety, filled with faceless, all-pervading dread. Sure. Put it up. Our works are like our children; for better or worse, we have to own them.

And here's what he wrote, another lovely poem:

The Wheel

At the foot of our basement stairs
A spoked wheel leans on a box,
its perfect symmetry of pairs
a pure illusion, paradox.

The eye rights it, the way the heart
restores its lost and broken objects,
trues the skewed, rusty parts
to pure, unearthly polish, reflects

gold the brass of vanished keys,
beyond price the fountain pens
forgotten in lost libraries,
perfected in nostalgia’s cloudy lens.

Eyes shine too in the mind.
In corridors of complicated sleep
they probe the shadows unresigned
to what we had, but couldn’t keep.

Ageless in a labyrinth of grace,
they search the old familiar ground
for spokes to fit the vacant spaces,
end their quiet clamor to be found.