Saturday, September 7, 2013

At 4 A.M.

Evan Izer, Distant skyline (paper negative) , c. 1992






In a dark yard in a sparse town,
under scattered starlight
in September, the rasps
of three cricket's wings
move in and out of phase
above a low, coastal kind of sound
that is not water,
but the hiss of distant tires
washing up and down US 30.

"If I would follow that road, miles north,
it terminates in Times Square,
and I would be home again"
I tell myself.

But distance and time are tangled;

New York, my life, everything,
it all still flickers and glows, faintly
like the scattered stars, lights in dark skies,
whose distant sources may have darkened
and disappeared—
but, for now,
the light still comes.

And then I think of a boat in water,

again in darkness,
navigated, steered,
as they once were,
by the light of stars,
both there and not-there.

12 comments:

deborah said...

Thank you, Palladian, that's beautiful.

Your skyline contains the Twin Towers, which strikes a sadness in me. Not to be overly dramatic, it seems that we have a newer time frame than B.C. and A.D., and that in any NYC skyline containing them, they act as a scar. This must be how it is for older generations and their markers.

(Clicking on the image will enlarge it.)

deborah said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Eric the Fruit Bat said...

I'm going to guess that Palladian doesn't watch a lot of television.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Nice poem Palladian.

ricpic said...

Sparse towns ain't so bad
Nor is ruin when you've come to it;
The only thing sad
Is being locked in a one key fit.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

US 30 = US 30th state, Wisconsin.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Is it me or does Palladian and Chip get the cold shoulder on this blog?

yashu said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
yashu said...

I don't think that's the case, Lem.

Beautiful & poignant, Palladian. The experience... feeling... reflection is so vividly, precisely, delicately evoked-- I feel I'm there, not-there, in your place (ensouled body in specific existential straits) at that moment.

I want to say: may you find your way "home." But also: this here now, adrift on the dark pathless sea-- the subject of your poem-- is in its way "home" too.

Maybe we meet ourselves most intimately when we're lost.

William said...

I'm no judge of such things, but it did read like poetry......And if the mood and the moment did inspire poetry, the mood and the moment were not such a waste.

bagoh20 said...

A cold shoulder is the the first move in a courtship dance that ends with spooning. I wish we could get this whole commenter community into one long bunny hopping/spooning sandwich. A kind of non-surgical human centipede of love.

yashu said...

I wish we could get this whole commenter community into one long bunny hopping/spooning sandwich. A kind of non-surgical human centipede of love.

Or
a
big
dog
pile.