By David Yezzi

Featured Art: (Untitled) City Scene with Playground by Unidentified

Some mornings I wake up in my old house,
half-conscious, squinting at the seam of light
gilding the edges of the flowered curtains.
I can imagine—actually feel, in fact—
that I am back there, where three flights down
the city’s up before me making noise:
a woman in green unchains the gated park
and the cross street fills with taxis. The light turns.
And in my half-lit bedroom, I am held
by a taut web of untold activity.
It surrounds me and carries on without me.
I breathe it in, smiling, lightened somehow.
For a moment then, I recognize myself,
before I’m back here where not all that much
goes on and the day begins its long goodbye.

David Yezzi’s latest books of poetry are Birds of the Air and Black Sea (both in the Carnegie Mellon Poets Series). He teaches in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins and edits The Hopkins Review.

Originally published in Issue 19.