In a pair of jeans and an old sweatshirt
(this poem is currently in competition)

1.
Sometimes you just can�t walk anymore.

You start a stride that hurts
not in the calves or the thighs
but in the pit of you it hurts

and the faint frosty wind
pushes against you in light pressure
a wind-hand against your closed-off
face-like-birch-bark
and pushes your shoulders and your chest

So you sit down under the moonlight
and under the last paleness of twilight
as it folds its cold hands behind it
on the sky and trickles stars
faded and wonderful and starry
You sit there because you can�t walk
not anymore it�s not possible

You watch the warm light
of the place that you left behind you
and the distant warm light
of the place that you are going to
and you keep your palms pressed hard
on the cold heavy pavement

Until you are over it and you get up
having drank the quasars and the dusk
enough to cool the burning sensation and
ease the pain in the pit of you
And you walk on thinking over and over
I always have to keep on walking
when the stopping part ends

2.
Sometimes you can walk and you do.

I once was on a midnight ramble
with silence and darkness and steel
and with a young man

His friend appeared and seared the quiet
with the stars overhead and spinning
and they went running to jump on the concrete
and on the cars and trucks and vans
and I was supposed to stay
to stand and to wait and watch

But the ache in my knees pushed me
and the gentle mother wind
touched my crown and pushed me
and I thought if the young man wanted
he could call to me maybe slow me

I walked away feeling his eyes on me
feeling the freedom of night air
all around me on all sides but down
horizons like the hem of my skirt
stars in the black mess of my hair

And on and on I walked because the
wind and the pain would not let me stop
thinking all the time that someday
I will have to stop when I break against something

3.
I am waiting to break against your voice
We will sit together suddenly when you pull me still
And I will jump to dance away with you too

I have felt freedom like a swimming-hole
all around me for years of swimming days
Robe me with the burden of your love

copyright 2001 by devon