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The Truth

By Tim Dlugos 1950–1990 Tim Dlugos

Every time I use

my language, I tell

the truth. A cat

in a white collar,

like a priest with calico

fur, walks across the dead

grass of the yard, and out

through the white fence. The sun’s

strong, but the colors of the lawn

were washed out by the winter, not the light.

February. Stained glass window of the house

next door takes the sun’s full brunt.

It must look spectacular

to the neighbor in my head,

a white-haired woman with an air

of dignity and grace, who

through pools of the intensest

colors climbs the flight of stairs.

I’ve never seen it,

but I know it’s there.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2009).

Biography

Poet Tim Dlugos was born in Springfield, Massachusetts and grew up in Arlington, Virginia. From 1968 to 1970, he was a Christian Brother at LaSalle College in Philadelphia. He left LaSalle and moved to Washington, DC, where he participated in the Mass Transit poetry readings. In the late 1970s, he moved to New York City and was active in the Lower East Side literary scene, where he was a contributing editor to Christopher Street . . .

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