Old, old notebook poems #1

Baudelaire

February 18, 1999

Today is the kind of day

to think of obscure streets,

steaming and bending into wreckage.

To try and pull some

breath from beneath

the skin of the city,

a bit of air that tastes new

and brings us back to grapevines

that once twisted here.

There may be a ghost

draped over the streetlamp

there, surrounded by

the puckered fog.

We have had wounds.

We have sought refuge

in the destroyed.

There may be a memory

hidden beneath the broken

phone booth:

a touch of a soft finger,

a few notes on strings ,

a singing that has never

really stopped.