NEW DAY
It feels, no looks like a pearlescent pond.
It’s quiet, reflecting a faraway sky that moods
neither dawn nor dusk. It looks, no
feels like the lightest pressure on wet leaves
of a man in fatigues, emerging from trees
walking slowly as if penitent. It looks
and feels like his side is bleeding from
an extraction, but he feels no pain
and look, only tears soon gone as he reaches
a shaft of sunlight, that looks and feels
like a perfect joke and icon of self-forgiveness.
Walking alone, beside the pool he gets serious,
resisting the urge to see faces in the mirror pool,
to hear voices in the mirror mind, converse
in silence as he often did. He walks without sex.
He only grieves in the early morning, which
it is, that he will die, which he will not
do while longing, or jealous, or in sorrow. Though
cliche to say, it looks and feels like a new day.
Author’s Bio
Lawrence Bridges is best known for work in the film and literary world. His poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, and The Tampa Review. He has published three volumes of poetry: Horses on Drums, Flip Days, and Brownwood. As a filmmaker, he created a series of literary documentaries for the NEA’s “Big Read” initiative, which include profiles of Ray Bradbury, Amy Tan, Tobias Wolff, and Cynthia Ozick. His photographs have appeared in the Las Laguna Art Gallery 2020, Humana Obscura, Wanderlust: A Travel Journal, the London Photo Festival, and displayed in the ENSO Art Gallery, in Malibu, California.
