In Smaller Towns, I Walked Away Many Nights

Night Walk

Sky's black gloss and the street
a long mirror of sidewalk lights.

The wind pushes wet leaves and an empty
garbage bag slick with rain behind you;

your dark neighbourhood shakes
the folded map inside.

What makes the body pace
the night to sudden nowhere,

the feet wear down the earth's hard edges.
So the idea begins its slow erosion from stone.

Like the artist with his prophet hands
sculpting slabs of matrble sliver-thin,

a father's hand on his small girl's forehead
soothing the fever toward sleep

or a man's naked back sanding down
the wood's rough cut, bone-smooth.

The blood with its desert silt pours on
in the anxious cities,

in you who walk the darkness
with that hand upon yopur shoulder

to wear away the heaviness,
to usher down the flesh.



Carla Funk
the sewing room
Turnstone Press 2006