Evidence of Angels

(Anthology Selection, Canadian Authors Association Niagara Branch, Annual Poetry Competition. 2017.)

A rare Friday evening
the whole family at home:
I read poetry under yellow lamplight
beside a window open to that new grass fragrance
tuck myself up to my man
who yells at the TV play-off game

while our younger son
boneless teenager
sprawls across the sagging couch
right hand dipping rhythmically into a bag of Easter chocolate.

And as if this isn’t
evidence enough:

Our older son holds an ice pack to his eye
not the eye nearly lost last year
to the virulent infection living in
the contact lens case he carried
in his hockey bag
the other one
the right one
now stained and puffy
with a cut the length of the
butt end of a stick
that jammed under his visor in a scrum so now
swelling raises his right eyebrow
in an expression of surprise
that his visor
the cool one, the one called a “bubble”
stopped the stick at the ocular bone.

A cheer bursts in unison from all three of them:
the rookie goalie just snagged a puck mid-air
and saved the game.