poems as hand- and foot-holds on a glass mountain

Withholding

 

driving into a bank’s covered parking
money’s promised numbers keep

a fleeting numerical relationship
Where’s Rebecca of New York’s 1921?

saved in a Paul Strand photo in this morning’s New Yorker
deep in numerical sadness

her bony features youth-fleshed
her long stare past us from far behind

her numbers having fled, still fleeing
she sees her long-ago mistaking

a low world-wide withholding
for its crisp green promises of saving

over glass-like distance her nearness stabs
her grief, her misfortune fund these our prodigal withdrawals

 

 

(see The New Yorker)

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