Coping with Awe by Bonnie Proudfoot

Coping With Awe

There are moments in the city
when the buildings part
to let the light come through.
This can happen, say, on a winter's afternoon,
just before sunset, when the light
slants eastward from the river,
and blazes in the glass and steel.
You can mistake your own direction,
forget where the Strand Bookstore is,
find yourself at the Flatiron Building instead,
as you begin turning toward the light,
watching the narrow widen,
the low arc of brilliance rising
over the faces of strangers.
And then?
How do we talk about the great
and wondrous things we have seen?
and who do we tell?
I have seen the city darken and chill
on a mid-summer afternoon during a solar eclipse.
Hundreds, no, thousands of people standing
on the street and staring up between buildings,
and even more of us, staring
at the image of the sun, hundreds of times over
reflected in horizontal rows of windows.
One world swallowing another.
What about the streetlights flickering?
what about the sparrows flying circles to their nests?
what about the wind?
What about ten thousand people,
each staring into ten thousand suns,
each sun disappearing into blackness and steel,
disappearing, disappearing
only this once.

***

Bonnie Proudfoot home page

Poetry Online

Wired for Books