Woman Walking

This is a slightly revised version of a poem from my first book-length collection, Men, published by Fiddlehead Poetry Books in 1979.


Woman walking

through the city's secret
of the streets is pacing
with the flow of the crowd
you are its loosest part
stepping out--to pass this couple dawdling by windows;
slowing down--to let these schoolgirls scamper for a streetcar;
side-stepping--this fat man arguing with his son

into the clear

alert and balanced as an Arab mare;
beautiful and admired one moment;
invisible and forgotten one moment later.

But now you look ahead, and there
is a cluster of young men on the corner,
the scouts of their eyes' artillery
already measuring you, threatening
to confine you to the level of their reckoning.

They must be faced
one by one
seen
and known to be seen

--meet each one's eyes
and he is alone--

and looks away--reduced
to single adversaries
singularly vanquished,

and you are walking
through a silence of ultra-violet understanding
steady as a metronome

walking down the miles
on the trail of time
you are
striding through the city.