Gale Batchelder
Once I knew
how to walk among crowds how to count a day and what to count on
or so I believed a way to breathe all that surrounded me to be in concert with
now empty that one late August day the grass would turn brown
and bicycles multiply with students
why set aside a shared street no one strolling on their way to visit a friend
a bottle of wine swung gently by their side held by its cool neck in a paper bag
or re-usable shopping sack
where is the mirror of other people to show us who we are to purpose ourselves
by a gesture of come or go we’re all traveling in the same direction
around the pond to limit our breath and shield our tomorrow
—Submitted on 09/21/2020
Gale Batchelder‘s poems have appeared in Colorado Review, Amethyst Arsenic, White Whale Review, and other journals, as well as in the anthologies New Smoke: An Anthology of Poetry Inspired By Neo Rauch (Off the Park Press, 2009) and The Triumph of Poverty: Poetry Inspired by the Work of Nicole Eisenman (Off The Park Press, 2012). She lives in Cambridge, Mass.
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