THE ARRIVAL

by Daniel Simko

after a photograph almost taken in Berlin

Wet slate roofs.  Pigeons.  A light.
A leaf on the sidewalk.
The shadows slipping between cobblestones.

It is already dusk
when you arrive
from Paris,
smoke rising from the Diesel
as you step out
with your black hair untied.

I am almost always
turning into that smoke,
into the pigeons landing
on the glass roof.

Or I wake up
and you come
with a shawl
black with stars.

Paris, 1980

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