The metro empties us up and out
into the square where one can be assured
a stray ball or bicycle wheel will find its way.
It is then I think of you stringing together
your own same-self acts, turning over the moments
and marking your satisfaction or the hole you find there.
There was a broken line of sunlight this afternoon.
On the train it was a sequence of beaded points,
A fleshy man all in black, thick plastic glasses
puffed around his sober face, but there pinched in a fist
a bright reel of glowing daffodils.
He must have been smiling somewhere.
Another stranger held a large wooden frame carved
with animals, leafs, blossoms in relief,
but empty only leaning on the blank wall
surrounded by us who make the myriad.
Each one of these selves moving has a day
and a universe, keeps an eye on the grey sky like I do perhaps,
waits resignedly for the rain that will pierce this peach
of a hard spring not yet ripened.
I imagine you quietly with your book as is fitting,
or slicing thin blades of garlic which also suits you.
It is enormous; you do not see these seconds of day
that are here, mine.
This is the space in which I have chosen
to construct. It is pliable. I wait for the moments
to make something as they pile up.
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Dear Heidi,
I've been thinking about this poem a lot since I read it--actually, I was inspired to write something myself because of it, which maybe one day I will finish and post. But for now, some comments on this poem.
I am not sure if the post-title is the poem title but I prefer if it is the poem-first-line as it seems to be in the email you sent me. The way this operates as a first line is just so spectacular that it transforms the (more ordinary) image of the metro stop; the abruptness of the first line illustrates the feeling of stepping off a train, coming into the sunlight . . . it's great.
"one can be assured" stuck in my head because of it's strangeness. Self-same acts stuck in my head, and so did the sequence of beaded points.
Is the "it" in the first line of stanza 3 the broken line of sunlight from the line before?
Could you do away entirely with the line "He must have been smiling somewhere."?
I love "us who make the myriad." Not sure about the next two stanza--even though I like the peach, it doesn't seem right somehow. Too much explication marring the mystical tone? Maybe eliminate--go straight from myriad to "I imagine"?
"It is enourmous" has been stuck in my head. The last stanza is near-perfect. My only wish is that it was apparent that there are plural "you"s that you are imagining in counterpoint to the one self. But perhaps that's another poem?
Do tell me where you've gone with this.
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