Michael Wyndham Thomas
Atlanta Crosswalk
I am relieved
when others join me
at a kerb
to take on a street
that is a hundred miles wide,
a thousand fathoms deep.
It means I have guides
to string me after
like a toddle-shod child,
past the detonations of engines,
the wall-eyed appetites of lamps,
the grins of trucks like a lizard’s dream
of fleshly repletion.
In my land,
snug, bump-headed cars
snuffle about the paths of a garden,
and the grizzle of a horn
is as like to be
abstraction’s passing biff
as a cry to horsepower.
The crowd moves.
I tuck myself in the middle
like a nugget
in packing-foam --
then unfurl on the opposite kerb
in grownup strides of conquest,
as enchanted as some loafing knight
who cracks an iron foot against low stone
and astonishes a grail into sunbreak.
Page(s) 60
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