Walking

     Less than what we were, we come back
     from the quiet of the trees, from dust motes
     streaming down through the leaves, from long boulevards
     that release their horizon like a blue breath,
     back from habits that go on without us,
     from signs that wave their dark wands.

     The time for us ended long ago
     in the gold blaze burning in a puddle,
     in the touch of your lips, in the girlish
     curve of your body, in the almond-shaped eyes
     of the white shepherd shaking itself from sleep
     as it rose toward us in the pipe-shop window.
     The time for us ended on the path
     where the irises dangled their purple tongues
     and wasps flew from the tips of cedar bushes,
     poking holes in the moist hot air.

     Now stoplights blink out their messages.
     Raindrops splatter the scaffoldings.
     We walk on--green fires flaring at noon.


     Jeff Friedman

     
     *         *          *
  

     about the poem:

     "I started the poem 'Walking' to describe a walk through a neighborhood
     in St. Louis, the Delmar Loop, but as the poem progressed through 
     various drafts, it turned out to be about a relationship. In writing
     the poem, I was no doubt influenced by Robert Frost, since I've been 
     immersed in his work for the last two years. In many of Frost's poems
     a speaker walks out alone to some desolate place that suggests an inner
     or other world. I wanted to do something similar, but on my walk, the 
     speaker ends up with his lover on a city street--in a setting that on
     the surface, at least, is not desolate--and the poem becomes a metaphor
     for their relationship, attempting to capture past, present, and future
     in the motion of the walk."



     *         *          *
  


     Window

     From the window she sees
     the frozen black thread,
     clawed shoulders of ice,  
     the white smash of rock

     as she remembers how he mocked her, 
     mimicking her facial expressions
     and voice, the cruel questions 
     he turned over and over--

     always with the pretense 
     of helping her--until she would 
     close her eyes and imagine
     each question swirling 

     soundlessly in space like a galaxy 
     of dead stars. Then she would think of herself
     as a target formed in glass
     the instant before it flies into 

     fragments. As she stares at 
     the snow on the back of the river,
     she tries to talk to him, 
     tries to explain the way she feels

     even though she knows he will cut
     her off, jump to a subject 
     that matters little to either of them
     and then to another. 

     With her hands reaching out, she plunges 
     into a dark cold river,
     plummets blindly, 
     and when a ray of light breaks through,

     when the silver flames of the torches 
     light a path to the bottom,
     it seems she can almost touch 
     what she is trying to say.

     
     Jeff Friedman  (Click for bio.)


      


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