January 31 (The sky is crumbling…)
by David Lehman
The sky is crumbling into millions of paper dots
the wind blows in my face
so I duck into my favorite barber shop
and listen to Vivaldi and look in the mirror
reflecting the shopfront windows, Broadway
and 104th, and watch the dots blown by the wind
blow into the faces of the walkers outside
& here comes a thin old man swaddled in scarves,
he must be seventy-five, walking slowly,
and in his mind there is a young man dancing,
maybe seventeen years old, on a June evening —
he is that young man, I can tell, watching him walk
Nice poem. Sometimes when I’m walking, I actually think about being 21 or so. I think, Oh, I’m walking so spritely today that I must be 21. I feel 21. I can’t possibly be 54. I even try to draw my shoulders back and walk a little faster ’cause the 21’s aren’t bent over, and they are all walking very fast…or maybe ambling along because they don’t really think about their age at all. They just “are.”
mom, i love this comment. you rock.