‘Everything changes / Everything remains’: Poems of love and longing in a city

Turn the Turn

We start the morning paralysed,
Like stone.

Then something turns –

Reminds us of all the practical things,
And that becomes our day.
And the day after,
And the day after that.

Until you wake up years later

To realise you’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere –
Lost your way,
So you try and start again,
Or so you say.

False Down

Six in the morning,
A bus to downtown;
Walk straight up 4th Street
To the corner of Second Avenue.

The sky deep blue,
The streets, pink.
Empty sidewalks, strewn cigarette ends,
And the bar lights off.

But I know,
As I knew twenty years ago,
That behind the drawn curtains
The ashtrays are out,
The lines cut neatly on the table,
And old friends

Laugh together
Until sleep turns
To something between dawn and dusk.

They will stay there until eight, I know,
Because where else will they go?

Never home,
Never to real nightfall,
Which only draws out all the things that remain
Hidden during the day.

You Make a Wish

Like snowflakes in July,
softly,
In case someone hears.
(It won’t come true.)

You can’t wish for everything,
Because there’s too much to ask for.

So you ask for one small thing and wait.

But after the wish is made,
You speak only to the gardenias
At the window.

I Woke Up Today

And you weren’t there.
I woke up yesterday, and then too.
Last month,
Last year,
The year before.

It’s confusing because you’re here –
Your hand poised under your chin,
In thought
Or pretence thought....

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