Haste
/Philip Newton
You can no longer get there
and if you did
you wouldn’t know it
When you arrived
it would only be a day
or a night, in a city
like the others, netted
harboring habits, drug stores
full of statues, pallid food
hushed and forlorn glances
And when you left this place
there would be only
an empty spot
where another empty spot had been
A place for shoes
A drunken recollection
Something always
left behind
Like a cat, a needle
or that one red thing
you can’t quite recall
except that it was in fact quite red
Author’s Commentary: This transience: experience, place, unreliable memory. Consciousness as an accretion of sensations is malleable, and with a certain view (say, from the poem) what is transient can become transcendent. Plain red; shoes left forgotten; dull meals; a city. Everything builds, speaks and grows its own life into yours, supplanting you eventually, even as you become part of it.
Philip Newton lives in Oregon. His novel, Terrane, was recently published by Unsolicited Press. In addition to writing poetry and fiction, he records and performs original music.
