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Witness
a poem
when they urge him to take expression to its fullest limits
it isn’t him they’re thinking of, but themselves
it’s a comfort to watch someone else
run screaming through the streets, stop suddenly
and grab their hair and pull as if by sheer force
the brain could be straightened into controllable circuits
of thought and thus translated to the heart
it’s the same principle as accidents on the street
that twisted fascination of someone else’s cries
before the ambulance finally arrives to clear the area
we’re so pleased it isn’t us we don’t notice the guilt
leading us carefully to the sadness that it has to be anyone
we wonder if that’s what we would do lying in their place
if that’s what our pain would sound like in the thin cold air
and how no one else would cry for us in that exact pitch
__________
Copyright 1990 Marguerite Floyd all rights reserved
This poem first appeared in Bellows, Fall 1990
