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Providence, July, 1974
by Lisabet Sarai
some of the streets
will only come out
after supper
in summer,
only untwine
as I ride them,
rusty
with dusk and
a muggy night yawning
and grumbling
ahead.
Red
behind me,
a final spurt
of sunset gushing
over the brink
of prospect street,
on the granite feet
of roger williams
splashing; but
my roads
are cobbled with dark,
spun out of shadows
and history
just as I'm rounding
the corner; sometimes
they barely arrive
before I find them.
the green-grown hollows,
the rose-starred brambles
glimpsed through the slats
of picketed gates
are indistinct,
almost unfinished --
wells of mist
gathered and meshed
in intricate wrought iron
arabesques.
the windows:
a treasure
of diamond panes,
leaded or faceted,
jalousied, shuttered,
bowed or clasped
by balcony curves --
tower windows,
cupolas peering
down on my city
floating toward dark;
the startling gold
of a parallel world
shimmering veiled
by curtain lace.
obscure little lanes
lined with wind-eaten shingle,
gingerbread carving,
sandpaper stucco
swallowed in ivy --
architectures
I've sketched through years
of reading and dreaming --
wink into being
in time with my pedalling
clambering up
along with me,
breathless, into the evening,
melt with my echoing
wheeling away.
©2002 by Lisabet Sarai
Lisabet Sarai has been writing forever. She has produced poetry,
fiction, marketing literature, technical specifications, and
a dissertation, and is author of two published novels, Raw Silk
and Incognito. Ms. Sarai has traveled widely but currently
resides with her husband and pampered felines in western Massachusetts.
See more of her work at her Web site.
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Slow Trains, Volume 1 in print