…it never has been, I thought
I read the news, have seen the stats
hear the doppler rise and fall of sirens
bouncing off the city walls insistent
on untrammelled passage
scrambling wits of locked in drivers
blocked in lanes unsure quite where
the blue lights approach from
or head toward, what they are
and who they’re for
.
May I? For a moment, until it clears.
Could it ever, I wondered after
weeks, months, years have passed?
Some still remember how it felt
to bump accidentally into friends
or brew a fight with a stranger
or catch the light in a smile
(while sharing a smoke at the cool side-door)
agreeing to something a little more intimate
~
n.b. NaPoWriMo 2021 Day 6 Prompt, take a line from a story as a prompt, then write the poem, then
“Actually, one of them was supposed to come today, but because of the commotion going on out there they sent me instead.”
From Samsa in Love by Haruki Murakami first published in The New Yorker, republished in Desire Vintage Classics / Penguin Random House (London, 2017).
~
CLP 06/04/2021
