Live Encounters Poetry & Writing May 2026
A Trick of the Light, poems by Michael Minassian.
A Trick of the Light
At the edge of the garden
I saw a thin black snake
stretched out on the grass,
so still it seemed
a twisted branch some storm
had torn away from the limb
of the apple tree, bare now
with winter’s derelict wind.
Perhaps in the morning
I will wake to find the snake
was simply a length of rope
or a random stretch of garden hose,
a trick of light and shadow
no more deadly than other
illusions, stories we tell ourselves,
to welcome or shun the darkness,
on the wounded shore.
The Models All Have Different Paths
says the weather man
and at first, I think
he is talking about
Fashion Week
in Manhattan,
but then he mentions
wind speed
and barometric pressure,
says this storm
will be called Jerry,
my father’s name,
on the 10th anniversary
of his death,
just weeks after
he told me about his time
in the navy during WW2
typing supply requests
in San Francisco
or San Diego,
he couldn’t remember where.
The eye is clearly formed,
the weatherman continues,
and I know just what he means—
my father suddenly
colorblind late in life,
stopping at green lights
until I took away his car keys—
another cone of uncertainty
before landfall,
the beginning of the end.
Exit Stage Left
My colleague and office neighbor,
a professor in the theatre department,
caught a late summer cold.
By fall, it turned to pneumonia,
then cancer, then death—
how sudden and inevitable it seemed.
I remember our conversations
about acting, theatre, and students,
comparing notes on our careers,
and college years,
how we ended up in Florida.
There are more moments
lost than we know,
he once said
when we were having lunch.
Every semester, he visited
my British Lit Class,
reciting the Prologue to Beowulf
in Old English from memory,
my students looking bored
and impressed in turn.
His wife took my course,
and dropped by my office
while she waited for Richard
to finish his last class,
telling me funny stories
about how they met
and fell in love.
When he got sick,
his students collected money
and sent flowers when he came
home from the hospital.
He knows he’s going to die,
she once told me.
I drove down to Key West
for Spring Break that year
and when I came back,
he was gone—
a kind and gentle man
he took his last exit
with no dragons by his side.
© Michael Minassian
Michael Minassian is a Contributing Editor for Verse-Virtual, an online poetry journal. His poetry collections Time is Not a River, Morning Calm, A Matter of Timing and Jack Pays a Visit, are all available on Amazon. His collection 1000 Pieces of Time was released October, 2025 by Sheila-Na-Gig, Inc. For more information: https://michaelminassian.com