Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Tuesday Poem: An earlier version published by Philadelphia Stories in 2007



Philadelphia Fog

It gathers in puffs outside the windows,
until even the tallest buildings,
hunched as they are near the river,
slip away like memories do
when you get older,
so you’re not sure whether
they ever really happened.
Maybe you dreamed them.

The Ben Franklin Bridge,
with its big sweeps of light
and delicate spider web curves,
erased too, like chalk on a board,
or chalk effaced by a field of chalk.

The city becomes mythology then:
a story we all agree to believe,
a creature in metamorphosis,
that old ghost, we've seen
many times, both fearsome
and genial, haunting the waterfront.

We curl inside our prisons
surrounded by nothing other than white,
worried we too might soon disappear:
like herds of tiny ancient beasts,
or schools of fish being gobbled whole
by this great white hunger
as big as a snow’s.


1 comment:

Helen McKinlay said...

Love the photo Eileen. And the poem
'the buildings slipping away like memories' and 'the city becomes mythology' lovely phrases. Thanks for posting this:-)