LINDA GREGG
STAYING AFTER
I grew up with horses and poems
when that was the time for that.
Then Ginsberg and Orlovsky
in the Fillmore West when
everybody was dancing. I sat
in the balcony with my legs
pushed through the railing,
watching Janis Joplin sing.
Women have houses now, and children.
I live alone in a kind of luxury.
I wake when I feel like it,
read what Rilke wrote to Tsvetaeva.
At night I watch the apartments
whose windows are still lit
after midnight. I fell in love.
I believed people. And even now
I love the yellow light shining
down on the dirty brick wall.
from In the Middle Distance
(Graywolf Press, 2006)
photo : flickr
Long before days dawned cynical, one after the other, and poets weren't as clinical, in fact they were truant and almost wanderers, and would admit easily to something like falling in love and believing in people, Linda Gregg grew up as a poet. It's made for her some immaculate and endearing poetry. I came upon one the other day, far from home, where I reached a book of poems down from a shelf and standing there minding my own business, just started to read.
