Memory of Enchantment

After Herbie Hancock & Wayne Shorter

 

How is it I imagine us older, already,

and walking in autumn to this song,

and we are beautiful, as we are now,

beautiful as you are now, when you

look at me. It is autumn, the city is

quiet and not quiet as the song is,

around us, kids on bikes, as we are

wrapped around each other like

the piano and the sax and the sudden

bikes but then the quiet and the yellow

leaves. My arm is through yours, my

hand in your pocket and it is autumn,

late afternoon. We’ve had a quiet good

day of work, each, then headed out

together and the song is the city we love

around us together and we are older but

not yet old and we are beautiful as the song.

---

The daughter of a war refugee, Sarah Browning is the author of Killing Summer (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2017) and Whiskey in the Garden of Eden (The Word Works, 2007). She is co-founder and Executive Director of Split This Rock and an Associate Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies. She is the recipient of fellowships from the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Adirondack Center for Writing. She has been guest editor or co-edited special issues of Beltway Poetry Quarterly, The Delaware Poetry Review, and POETRY magazine. Browning co-hosts the Sunday Kind of Love poetry series at Busboys and Poets in Washington, DC.