A Poem by Mary O'Leary
In every city there’s a river, a single strait
splitting the tall scrapes below long peers
like valleys for me to escape
to the steady safety of a fisher’s lure.
When the days are din, I stroll the wharf at dusk
watching the waves, missing my faraway laugh
whilst the sky glows soft, my memories like rust
after standing so long out of the waft.
They are different from what’s mine back home,
where the rivers weave a crumpled web
and there’s no peer but reeds for the foam
to dock on the banks of a watershed.
When back, I sit the shore at dawn
and wait for the water to reach my ears
before remembering why I’d first begone,
then leave again to be anywhere but here.