Sunday, April 24, 2016

One More Time



Detail from an oil painting by Stephen Poleskie, ca. 1964



A poem by Stephen Poleskie



If I could drive
yet one more time down the highway of my youth
One hundred miles per hour, hoping that
some officer would dare to stop me.
Through towns with names like Nanty Glow where no one lives, but trucks take feed.
And Berwick, with its factory making tanks for the military that I refused to serve, and later subway cars I rode in my pinch-penny youth.
All day and all night long,
roaring along the river, that roars along the road.
And I, passing through for one more time, my own Spring, Summer, and Fall.
But now Winter comes,
and I move slowly.



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This poem appears in a portfolio of poems on cards prepared by the Tompkins County Public Library in April 2016 to celebrate National Poetry Month. Stephen Poleskie is an artist and writer living in Ithaca, New York. He writing has appeared in literary journals and anthologies throughout the world and his artworks are in the collections of numerous museums including the MoMA and the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Poleskie is a professor emeritus at Cornell University.  Web site: www.stephenpoleskie.com

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4 comments:

sasha said...

I love this poem.I think of shades of James Dean and Steve McQueen, except that Steve Poleskie is thankfully still living. I'd like to see the entire painting

sasha said...
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sasha said...
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TerryG said...

Distant memories spawn prolific passages. Nice reading, Steve