Sunday balustrade
day comes cold and windy
down to your lungs’ downy chambers.
you turn away from one weathered architecture
to find another, the easy apartments of air,
of water, of people, assembled under islands
between cloud reefs, which are broadcasting
their gray from swollen breasts,
from massive arches.
don't trust the all-in gamble of the weather
report. let gray be a color, a steppe
clamped between roof- and treetops,
and glimpse the inside of the river, its
fledgling waves searching for the seashore.
or fit yourself in a scene with bread and gulls,
with a child disguised in wings and guarded
by two museums, benevolent stone grandmothers.
forget the watch in your pocket, it’s Sunday, on
the balustrade toward the canal doves are sitting
like ornaments, little steel-gray popes, relaxing.
About the Author
Ron Winkler, a poet, critic, and translator in Berlin, is Editor of Schwerkraft, an anthology of younger American poets.
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