Premonition
____________________________________

I am entering the day: the asphalt opens up
replete with cobblestone—playing fields
instead of medieval alleyways. The elevated train’s
Beaux Arts tassels crown the station as it slinks
corkscrew-like into the earth. On the ground

next to the entrance steps, a mangled teddy bear,
ursicide, we might call it, its woolen and sandy insides
snowbanking the curb. There’s plenty of other
garbage, too: paper wrappers, glass, bottles
with their shard-edged metal tops still attached;

then the job, up the block. Longwood Avenue
in its eerie, alarm-clock light, suburban almost
until the Bruckner Expwy. snakes the landscape,
gray-black congested-road variety. Life Skills class
at the Treatment Center today, and J.’s sickness—

the call to the paramedics frightened all of us,
then his short-breathed, gurney-strapped ride.
It is almost dusk in another part of the world.
And these are the easy endings we hope for:
a cigarette break, a love letter for our lifetime.

From Cut Off the Ears of Winter by Peter Covino

New Issues Poetry & Prose, Western Michigan University, Dept. of English,
1903 W. Michigan Ave., Kalamazoo, MI 49008-5331
| Home | Book Index |