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NIGHT LIFE
Often in dreams I am
waving farewell to you
through double glass panes: my taxi
or train window and yours,
usually in Europe. Last night
you were en route to your past
via the "Moskoview Express”
while I set out in the opposite direction
to be a guest choreographer somewhere.
Other nights the dream luggage evaporates
or we have to run faster than fire, or
the address we urgently seek
proves to be non-existent
just as the boulevard of our destiny dwindles
into a gravel path along a fence.
Yet in each dream is a sense
of our having reached some tremendous goal
—and then parting
certain of reunion
at an understood
place and time
we never name.
FOR YOU,
KATHY FISKUS
Today, after
fifty-three years,
your name came back to me
for the first time.
You and I were both six,
newscasts our only connection.
You had fallen down a very,
very deep well.
For days they tried to reach you,
pull you out alive.
They spoke to you
through a loudspeaker.
Somehow they could tell
that you were conscious.
I disappeared for hours
sliding myself into the crawl space
behind our scratchy brown sofa
under the east window
that faced Ohio, where you were—
willing your rescue,
kneeling back there
to look outside
at gathering clouds,
wondering if you
could look up the tunnel
and see sky.
Nightly radio reports continued
until the rescue failed.
I grieved alone,
told no one.
Today, during a poetry reading
your name suddenly sprang
to mind.
What more can be said?
If one who is listening hard
can hear from the past,
Kathy Fiskus,
let this poem for you
be my answer.
Classical ballet teacher/choreographer Joan Kunsch is associate artistic
director of Nutmeg Conservatory for the Arts in Torrington,
Connecticut. A guest teacher in Scandinavian ballet schools, she is also
ballet mistress to MOMIX dance company. Her translations of
contemporary Norwegian poetry have appeared in Two Lines, Ice-Floe,
Aftenposten and the Journal of Contemporary Anglo-Scandinavian Poetry. Her
original poetry has been published in various periodicals and websites,
and her book-length poetry manuscript SkyWritings is seeking a publisher. |