by Sarah Browning

It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!

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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.

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Sarah Browning is the author of Killing Summer (Sibling Rivalry) and Whiskey in the Garden of Eden (The Word Works). Co-founder and past Executive Director of Split This Rock, the poetry and social justice organization, she now teaches with Writers in Progress. Browning received the Lillian E. Smith Award and fellowships from DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities, VCCA, Yaddo, Porches, and Mesa Refuge. She holds an MFA in poetry and creative nonfiction from Rutgers Camden and lives in Philadelphia. More at sarahbrowning.net.

by Sarah Browning

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.