Night Calls
by Stephen Reilly
The jasmines thick, plentiful
tonight, the perfumed spirits
of aging matrons from the Fifties,
women of my grandmothers'
generation, women who
woke early for weekday Masses
and always carried crystal-
beaded rosaries in their purses.
Say Joyful Mysteries for us.
I clench the Sorrowfuls too tight
and celebrate what only
can be celebrated tonight, this:
the third rain of summer rains.
Stephen Reilly’s poems appeared in Charon, Albatross, Wraparound South, Main Street Rag, Broad River Review, Cape Rock, and other publications. One of his poems appears in the anthology Florida in Poetry: A History of the Imagination (Pineapple Press, 1995). Reilly presently works as a staff writer for the Englewood Sun, a daily Florida newspaper with circulation in south Sarasota County, Charlotte, and DeSoto Counties.
