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.

*   *   *

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

*   *   *