Duration

The East River looks frozen, choked

eddies pulling in oppositions.

Cumulocirrus skies leak blue in spots.

 

You are not waiting at home

as you were so long, long ago,

solid point ’round which my currents churned.

 

Picking my way through stepped-on

frozen slush, I push my heart rate,

building stamina for the long haul.

 

How many more miles without you

or any other You? Families pass

on the promenade. The men

 

have all married younger wives.

The women are plush and beautiful,

their lips open delicately when kissed.

 

I have not forgotten how I had

to teach you softness, the relaxed tongue,

the release that made you squirm.

 

Spring is so late this year

we may never thaw again. Hard

to believe, harder to bend not break.

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Amy Lemmon is the author of three poetry collections—Fine Motor (Sow’s Ear Poetry Review Press, 2008), Saint Nobody (Red Hen Press, 2009), and The Miracles (C&R Press, 2019)—and co-author, with Denise Duhamel, of the chapbooks ABBA: The Poems (Coconut Books, 2010) and Enjoy Hot or Iced: Poems in Conversation and a Conversation (Slapering Hol Press, 2011). Her poems and essays have appeared in The Best American Poetry, Rolling Stone, New Letters, Prairie Schooner, Verse, Court Green, The Journal, Marginalia, and many other magazines and anthologies. Amy is Professor and Chairperson of English and Communication Studies at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology, and co-editor (with Sarah Freligh) of The CDC Poetry Project.