Three in the Afternoon
I took my dog on a long walk.
I took my dog on a long walk and saw things
Things I’ve never seen before.
My neighbor on a run,
Running at three in the afternoon
Nothing but a tee shirt and shorts;
Short waves were exchanged and I laughed to myself.
My other neighbor was zooming with a teacher,
The teacher of his four-year-old daughter.
Side by side on the front stoop swing
Swinging and learning four-year-old-things.
A woman on her laptop
Her face topped with a mask,
Masked in her own front yard.
I crossed back and forth
avoiding people,
people who were also out
at three in the afternoon.
I crossed back and forth
avoiding people,
people who were also out
at three in the afternoon.
Eleven houses down, a childhood friend
cooped up in her childhood home
cooped up in her childhood home
Takes grad school classes from her yard
Her yard across from the park
A park now plastered with yellow signs,
Signs destined to be removed,
removed by the wind.
removed by the wind.
I like the approach you take to this contemporary slice-of-life type of poem. The images you choose here do a fine job representing our time. I could imagine reading this poem in 30 years and knowing exactly the time you meant and having the poem create a sense of powerful deja vu.
ReplyDeleteThis poem resonates well with other poems rooted in our contemporary experience with the Coronavirus, and I would like to discuss it in workshop tomorrow. I have quite a few suggestions and comments that I am looking forward to sharing tomorrow. More soon!
Many great things about this poem:
ReplyDelete1. The casual language/common verbs like "running", "laughing", and "swinging" reflects the everyday feeling the poem is conveying.
2. The way some sentences begin with the last word from the previous one which creates this connection, this elongated thread that could be representing the length of time since these days of quarantine seem like an endless loop or thread of days just repeating themselves.
3. I like that you chose a precise time (3 PM) to show how strange it is this whole scene. It makes your point even stronger about how these are "things I've never seen before". I also liked that you specified your childhood friend living "eleven houses down". I feel that if you stick with this precision and also specify how long this "long walk" is with your dog then the readers could place themselves in that specific context and frame of time/mind. And is the "woman" a neighbor or simply a stranger you saw in her own front yard? What's the relationship since you explained the other people's relation to you. Lastly, even though the ending is more of a harsher note (because the wind will knock down the sign, not a person due to the virus) there is a glimmer of hope and I appreciate that.