Shirt

I remember once I ran after you and tagged the fluttering shirt of you in the wind.

Once many days ago I drank a glassful of something and the picture of you shivered and slid on top of the stuff.

And again it was nobody else but you I heard in the singing voice of a careless humming woman.

One night when I sat with chums telling stories at a bonfire flickering red embers, in a language its own talking to a spread of white stars:

                          It was you that slunk laughing in the clumsy staggering shadows.

Broken answers of remembrance let me know you are alive with a peering phantom face behind a doorway somewhere in the city’s push and fury.

Or under a pack of moss and leaves waiting in silence under a twist of oaken arms ready as ever to run away again when I tag the fluttering shirt of you.

Carl Sandburg

Previous
Previous

Sport by Langston Hughes