At Thirty
Whole years I knew only nights: automats
& damp streets, the Lower East Side steep
with narrow rooms where sleepers turn beneath
alien skies. I ran when doorways spoke
rife with smoke & zippers. But it was only the heart's
racketing flywheel stuttering I want, I want
until exhaustion, until I was a guest in the yoke
of my body by the last margin of land where the river
mingles with the sea & far off daylight whitens,
a rending & yielding I must kneel before, as
barges loose glittering mineral freight
& behind me façades gleam with pigeons
folding iridescent wings. Their voices echo
in my voice naming what is lost, what remains.
-- Lynda Hull
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