A poem in honor of my mom and all people whose lives are an essential part of our own fabric

Paris Walk

My eyes barely closed,
I see myself alive in the Paris
Of my mother’s childhood.
The wet gray of cobblestones climbing
And winding through endless stories.
On this bridge, her delight.
By that window, her despair.
I float through the streets
Filled and emptied, filled and emptied
With a young girl’s appetite for experience,
Here shock, there wonder, now terror, now bliss.

The sound of her small shoes becomes
My heartbeat, carrying me through discovery,
Through new love of old things.
A pause before the tabac, espresso dancing on the breeze,
And the question is born:
How old am I really?

The moonlight streams feverishly
Across the flowered alley onto my feet;
The night air meets it and
Blows dust impatiently into my eyes,
And as the sidewalk hums below,
Their voices surround me in a chorus of “Now!”

- Eric Pomert, Winter 2007