We Are Crossing Soon

We Are Crossing Soon


It was hot. We wandered on the pavement.
We knew that soon we would get there.

We thought we were prepared-one says goodbye
and looks for a knife and a proper comb

and while doing so avoids a crying person.
Soon we would get there, or not soon but

we would, the bridge not too crowded, the agents
distracted, and the water would not be too wet.

The desert weeping manna in the cool morning will provide.
The streets of El Paso will provide.

We surfed on the ocean and kissed blond girls named Melissa
with each other astride the dumpsters

behind the TV factory. We were not suave
and we wouldn't like living alone, wondering what our

mothers were doing at that moment. At that moment
our mothers were sewing small pieces of old clothes.

Certainly we would arrive the way birds arrive, not through
maps and memory, but some other dark

knowledge, though we knew some would drop
dead from the sky. We had cousins. We smoked cigarettes

whenever we could and the avenues yawned, flustered
with feet-it was so hot-and beyond lay the river

in its cement trough, the highway, the fields
of peppers. We shined your shoes with a vigor

unexplained by democracy, our boots crooked
but shining, then your shoes were shining,

spotless down the dusty streets, the quarters
in our hands were shining like a teakettle we would own.



Connie Voisine
Posted over on Campbell Corner