I.

I miss the world when it was the size
of a soccer ball shuffled on sacred recess blacktop, 
a time before I had taken up barefooted walks, 
this ritualistic yearning to grow comfortable
with the texture of dirt on my soles, to accept 
she will one day hold my soul eternally.

I entangle my toes in her pea-green locks 
that mock the hair salons and loved ones
I will be forced to leave behind, no matter
how often recitations of the Whitmanian mantra
tenderly will I use you, curling grass
spill from my desperate lips. 

II. 

I am still angry at the moon
for being too big for cows to jump over.
When I lament her astronomical distance
from my windowsill to the sky, it is mistaken
as a profound metaphor for unrequited love
when really, I am stuck grappling with frustration—
the knowing—that I cannot embrace the beauties
of earth. Pleading for their tangibility
so that I might hold them carefully
against my chest, feel their heartbeat
pulse on my skin, synchronize their breaths
with my own, I long to affirm Mary Oliver's assertion
that I have a place in the family of things.

III. 

I worship the Dewey Decimal System,
venerating humanity as library books.
We are shelved, checked out, read, returned,
belonging for weeks at a time to one or another
as Tracy K. Smith wrote of books and I realized
to be true of people.

We are the torn pages of reckless handling,
a kaleidoscope of highlighted impact and dog-eared
paragraphs not wanting to be forgotten, a museum 
of thoughts penned in our margins. 

We are the handicraft of authorship
and the work of revision. The strong spine,
its softer edges. And we are rendered more beautiful
each time we are molded by the hands of all
who open the front cover to greet us.

IV. 

I lived in Dichotomy until I moved to the city.
Studio apartment, walls painted gray.
Here, I celebrate a luminous skyline 
from rooftop parties and miss the stars
when the stranger I am kissing departs.

I walk briskly, invigorated by possibility; 
A passerby might offer sidewalk admiration
of my new winter coat! Its green fleece
hails a taxi quickly. I open the door
and my pantyhose slide swiftly along the backseat
leather and I think of Ruby Jean, my old girl
now disassembled in a junkyard somewhere.

Often, I bring home bouquets to beautify
my thrift store-courtesy of a dining room 
and idly pluck the lily stamens on my walk
back. When I work a dull blade into the bodega
flowers—diagonally, just as I was taught at the florist
job I swore I hated—I hear nothing but scissor snips
and the conclusion of Cynthia Zarin's "Flowers":
I do not know how to hold all the beauty
and sorrow of my life. 

V.

I was crafting my musings on simplicities: 
on grass, on the moon, on books and flowers,
when Noor Hindi shouted: fuck your lecture
on craft, my people are dying! 

I realize it is time to put down the pen;
it is time to listen.

---

Harrsch, Blake. “Thursday Afternoon Walk with the Lines of My Favorite Poets,” Corner Pocket. Seton Hall University. May 2023.