Old Woman Crossing the Street

OLD WOMAN CROSSING THE STREET


Today on my way home during
rush hour, when all who have
gone forth are returning from
their restless groping toward
the night,--and I, though among them,
slow the way a poet is slow and
watchful--an old woman spoke
with her cane, she stuck it out
in front of her like a saber, she
charged into the road with the
shuff-stumble of the aged, her
bright blue jacket with hood covering
her crooked neck, she was declaring
her right to the road, though no cross
walk was in sight, she struck out
and trusted us to stop--and we did,
we had no choice but even if we did
we would have chosen to stop and
watch. For here was a woman
declaring more than her pedestrian
standing: she was speaking of horses
and trolley cars, of bicycles and Sunday
drives, of long walks in the park. She said
no to speed and demons, no to fast and
faster, no to mass-produced food, drug
revelation and saturn sex, broken bones
wrapped in bandaids, light bulbs that burn
out in hours, the unraveling thread and
the hole in the shoe.

And you know, even though this is Boston,
no body honked, nobody. On some other day
I wouldn't have been listening, I would have
the noise in my mind, the voices and songs,
the snowy TV and the untuned radio. But today
I heard all of this, I heard her say
you who have seen me,
make this a poem, for
such moments are poems
and I waited for her to go all the way across,
I didn't inch around, I watched
and saw that poetry is everywhere,
I saw that there is dignity in dying,
that some star spoke fifteen billion
years ago and said this woman
is my daughter look at how she burns.


Richard Smyth

Posted over on Anabiosis Press