Warden and Ellesmere By aldo kraas, www.PoetryPoem.com/poet11586 Unlock all Features - Upgrade to Poetry Prime
Pulling myself up onto a tower of bricks
I wince at the coarseness of the cement
my feet dangle and suddenly I feel young again
as I look up at the cloudless grey sky
and feel snowflakes fall on my face
loud guffaws and angry cursing come from biliard behind me
today I feel no urge to be like them, no desire to be older
and I wonder
how life would be for a girl who never grew up
a sea of drab colours washed by me
I trudge through the mountains of snow on the pavement shore,
listening to the waves of revving engines
coughing as cars spew out clouds of grey exhaust
I look up when I approach a bridge of concrete
to see a family of piggeons nesting in the rafters
and I wonder
how life would be for a girl who could fly.
Under a bridge I stand
my head tilted back to where I just came from
I watch pedestrian weave around each other
zigzagging just to avoid their lives crisscrossing
swimming side by side through tides of traffic
silent, pretending the other is not there
and I wonder
how life would be for a girl who could swim.
(what a pitiful thing to be, I muse,
until I realized that you do not need to be able to swim
to ignore each other
it is in the human condition to live on parallel paths
unless fate decides you should cross with another
sometimes the intersection is permanent-
a fixed point in time-
so I wonderif Warden and Ellesmere had been one of those.)
Waiting for the traffic light to turn red
it suddenly hits me how easy it would be to end it all in a split second
to count to three and take a step
to be taken in an instant to somewhere else
the stoplight turns red and I lose my thought
and I stroll past waiting cars,
I wonder
how life would be for a girl who actually wanted to take that step.
Above, rusted telephone wires run for miles and miles
messengers unoticed, lines slashing the sky
I round the corner to a picturesque street
as I head down, the echoes of Warden slowly
fade
away.
(suddenly, there is no distraction to mask my uncertainty.)
Watch me drown in my helpless thoughts
everything is quiet except the voices in my head
and the snow crunching beneath my feet
watch me ponder what could have been or what can now be
lost opportunities, endless possibilities,
unsolved misteries, far-fetched theories.
(I do not know what will become of me.)
I must age
I cannot fly
I cannot swim
but I do not want to die.
After all, the world is mostly water and we're all trying to float
I was dealt a good hand, but sometimes I forget
and so for every small thing that goes wrong
I tend to place the blame on the cards, the dealer or the deck
but in the ennd, none of it matters
because it's up to no one but me to play the game
and then I know
that life will be just fine for the girl I am.
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