She of the Long Flowing Hair

By Raymond Luczak

She

of the long flowing hair

cascading like the river 22 stories below

  telescopes far

on the avenue

  where

humans skitter along,

carrying their lunches and backpacks for another day

  in the office

and in hospitals.

  She

cannot see their faces

but she can see the stories unraveling from the way

  they ambulate

between dream and day

  where

the fog rumbles quietly

from the darkest recesses of their brains only to be

  recast as angels,

their eyes brightening.

  She

of the one day to come

when she will board the elevator and press the button

  for the lobby

and rejoin these souls

  where

they will walk past each other,

never asking for their names but always recognizing,

  recalls how once

she had been so touched.

  She

had grown up among

this city thrumming under her feet. Strands of her hair

  fell everywhere.

Her DNA took—

  where

it was dark and lonely—

root in the dynamited bedrock to make way for the

  underground trains

and in the steel beams.

  She

didn’t notice how

the city was evolving to look more like her spirit.

  The new buildings

looked fashionable

  where

details were good enough

but blended anyway among nondistinctive towers.

  Too expensive

to decorate much.

  She

refocuses her lens

on a man swaggering with a grubby backpack cutting

  deep into his

shoulders as he stands

  where

she once saw his face

startled with illumination as if from somewhere else,

  a small-town boy

cursed with big-time dreams.

---

Raymond Luczak is the author and editor of 40 books, including [Exeunt.] and Animals Out-There W-i-l-d. His work has appeared in Poetry, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. An inaugural Zoeglossia Poetry Fellow, he lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.