Light Feet, Heavy Footsteps

Based on unforgettable nights and even more unforgettable people.

Light Feet, Heavy Footsteps

 

   You were looking up, 

I was looking in.

And even though our skin tight-

Rope escalators crossed in the dark,

I had already promised

To be out of your mind.

  

You were afraid to blink, 

Afraid of what you’d see in the translucent

Dark, and so you held you head above

The rain and out of car windows,

Five-finger open handed steeling yourself

For what you couldn’t wait to see.

   

I was perfect-storm dusk, 

Positive only in precipitation and cloudbanks.

“I won’t try to save you from my rainy day,”

I said, not seeing by the way you spread your feet

 Like a battle stance, having taken hits before,

That you were prepared

To be your own umbrella.

  

But I had already drowned

In the sea of an idea of a sunny tomorrow,

Cloudless,

And you froze in place without blinking.

Shivering in your heart-

Murmurs more honest in their discord and skipped beat

Than even your most well meant and straight-faced smiles.

   

I passed you falling. 

Neither of us lifting our feet or wings, heavy,

But your easy grin

Couldn’t penetrate past my hard eyes.

“I know what it’s like,”

You whispered in blue lipped broken-

Hand sign language, hoping

Your fear-stitched white-flag semaphore would be seen 

Over my bone deep frown.

 

 Our trains past each other, speeding

Down the same track,

Losing sight of each other at times in the warm fog,

Separate, but hope tied-down to the tracks like lost clouds,

Drifting.

 

“I don’t know where I’m going,

And I feel every split in this rail,”

You wrote on a creased and bent scrap of paper held up

To the altitude-frosted window with a hand preemptively palsied

Not by indecisiveness, but by salvaged past over-assertiveness,

Each of us guilty of letting our wings take shallower breaths.

But me, I was staring at the chasm joins between the lines,

Hearing lost whispers on the rails,

And thinking about changing seats.

  

I caught up to you at the dim central hub. 

You were gray in the fog

Opaque with waiting,

 Your foot tapping distractedly, so apropos.

“You still give me butterflies,”

I lip read in your eyes.

I lowered my head, seeing the mist swirl around our legs

Like standing on clouds.

“I don’t know where I’ve been,”

I mumbled, slowly at first, then louder

With the confused confidence and earnest honesty

Of a midnight kiss under a swaying streetlight,

“But this is exactly where I want to be.”

Reviews

[LJW]

I imagined a woman who looked and dressed like Greta Garbo. The imagery here is remarkable. A film ran through my head and my eyes were the projector as I read along. Just jaw dropping, the whole experience. Can't even put into words how unique your writing (I have read just two so far and plan on returning for more) is.

I live to read something or someone who takes me to a place I have never been before.

[Marie Anzalone]

You have a remarkable gift for capturing the essence of human relationships in a few short lines, and showing us what is at the heart of the people you write about. Reading this, I felt I knew the story, the characters, the dsitance between them, the refusla to bend or break, the confusion that comes from being young and thinking and feeling and wishing you knew how the hell to feel more alive. No poet can ask for any more from his or her work.

[Charles]

How did I manage not to see this before now (too many writers on the site to see everything, I guess)? It is a jewel, and to think that the dialogue is real (as you say). Great imagery - metaphors and analogies are superb. I like the hyphenated words where one might not expect to find them and found myself wanting to add a few more. I think my favorite lines are about rope escalators crossing in the dark and being opaque with waiting. I think in stanza 6 that it should be trains 'passed' not 'past' but am bothered by how they could do this if they were speeding down the same track - poetic license I guess. Then, in the 7th stanza I wonder whether it should be 'chasm joints' not 'chasm joins'. All in all, a wondeful addition to the site and one for my library.

[cest la vie]

Jackson,

wonderful poem my friend.
I have stated to you already, your gift is extraordinary.
Beautiful!!

[Jackson Krauss Blind Pa..]

All the dialog is quoted (from memory) from recent real conversations that meant a lot to me...

They are where my poetry comes from...

[Cool Handless Luke]

nice write. very clean and concise. great description and metaphor. you have a considerable gift.