Poems from Rivard Street
by Benjamin Oldham
Seen all these people
in the park before,
seen the guys at the table
over there,
the girls laying
on the blankets,
the children playing
in the pond,
seen the people with their
headphones on,
the group of thirty somethings
some with kids
and others hardly jobs
but here they are together
with
the lady selling samosas and
the couples kissing
in the grass or
sitting on the benches
and the guy collecting cans,
empty cans
like all the lives
we’ve left
in previous summers.
Seen the sun go down
behind the trees,
seen the people peel away
for dinners out,
for drinks,
for nights away
from quiet homes,
and seen them later
on the terrasses,
at the bars,
on the balconies
and at the street corners
walking back
through the park
where memories of us
still linger in the grass:
bottle caps
and cigarette stubs
our lips
almost touched,
our fingers briefly held,
our lives almost met.
Our lives:
all left in summers
that we’ve seen before,
in visions we
can only take with us
and leave,
and come back
to a little square of park
where we can sit,
or lay,
or kiss
to look for them again.
You ask me
how I’m feeling today,
and all I can say
is that the form
is foreign
to the sounds in my mouth.
But remember my
mouth is frozen,
and the feeling will return
like this:
cold hands in a hot shower
or the sighing
expanding of the door frame
in the summer heat
or footsteps on the street,
the sort of going out
in the loud night
that makes friends
and lovers
and memories
like flowers that
little animals eat all spring
with thawing mouths
like me,
and they can eat
and grow strong again
and not have to say
how they feel.
I have to figure out
how to say
these mouthing thoughts,
and that is how I feel at all
the weakness of this
state I’m in,
and that is why
you should just think of me
for now
like I am eating flowers
until the feeling returns.