Deep Breaths


The city breathes in its rivers and bridges, salutes the well-known walkers: those who save snails,


balance on walls and befriend our trenchant trees. The sea sucks up our sandy footprints,


absorbs the gull’s galas laughter and emits, in salty retort, streams of gelid winds;


spears the drunken busker, mixing up his cluster chords. I, too, forget such simple things,


perhaps have never known, the numbers of busses, their routes, the benefits in owning an umbrella.


Among incandescent snows we jumped without parachutes skirting around each other’s eyes


like lazy window washers avoiding a mucky splodge. With smalt blue strokes, a plash


of sap green and dozens of spectrum orange, you painted over our fabled constellation


There’s nothing else for it now, but champagne fizz, undress me as a child,


beneath this spangled ceiling put my tongue on a crucifix and, like a city, draw me out.


MICHAEL PEDERSEN 23


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