Joan Gelfand, “Poets House Walk”

Across Brooklyn in a city dense
With watery dreams, a procession
Of crazy lovers strike out
To hear poetry recited mid-span.
Hum of traffic roars approval.

Toward DUMBO through the mist
Poets, strivers, drivers, divers
Graying profs, groupies, gurus hoof it,
To see hundred-year-old Kunitz carouse.

We stalk poetry across the bridge
In a town distracted, manufacturing
Your next thrill, and your next.

Bicycle tires tharump over
Old pocked, trampled wood.
Rush of water slaps girders
Shivers of bridge as wet drops
Shatter against metal deck.

The jig was up. It rained.
All readings canceled.

Finally, torrents gave way
To June light, shadow slant
Wide angles of cable, long stripes
Falling across beaten planks.
In the absence of poems,
Gorgeous geometry,
Engineering, poetry, and the wonder
Of holding things aloft.

Joan Gelfand will be reading at the Jefferson Market Library tonight at 5:30 p.m. with local poets Jane Ormerod, Toni Quest, and Karen Hildebrand in an event sponsored by the Women’s National Book Association (of which Gelfand is the former president). Other poems from A Dreamer’s Guide to Cities and Streams include “Venezia,” “Summer,” “Cupid,” and “Torqued Torus” (all in Poetry, the last in substantially different form as “Torqued—for Richard Serra”). There’s also three poems at StrangerRoad.com.

6 June 2011 | poetry |