April 10, 2007: The Day Flies Off Without Me, John Stammers
The Day Flies Off Without Me
John Stammers
The planes bound for all points everywhere
etch lines on my office window. From the top floor
London recedes in all directions, and beyond:
the world with its teeming hearts.
I am still, you move, I am a point of reference on a map;
I am at zero meridian as you consume the longitudes.
The pact we made to read our farewells exactly
at two in the afternoon with you in the air
holds me like a heavy winter coat.
Your unopened letter is in my pocket, beating.
[I love the sense of motion and sprawl and expansion in the whole poem, and how it packs in so many fantastic lines: “the world with its teeming hearts” and that last line, especially.]
More like this:
I Don’t ‘Go Organic’ Often, but When I Do, John Stammers
The Taxi, Amy Lowell
A year ago: A Supermarket in California, Allen Ginsberg
Two years ago: Tortures, Wislawa Szymborska
