Jan Irene Miller
Water Wars
Acrylic on paper
Inspiration piece
Out the Window
By Jules Rolfe
Response
Rise and fall of breath, darting eyes
Show intense curiosity & perceptive intelligence
She shows no other life signs.
She sits.
She sits by the window to write
Novels on the skyline,
Flash fiction at the intersections,
Poetry on the tallest buildings,
Songs through the park
bending, twisting, wrapping
‘round the city outside
She gathers up the half-faced man
sleeping on the corner,
the lamp shade cocked to the right
in the office building three stories below,
she weaves in each sign
One Way, Stop, Yield, Crossing, No U Turn
and leaves space for a dramatic pause
as the brown speckled dog pees in the park
She builds empires of clouds
and washes the city clean again and again.
A newer, taller, brighter city emerges
in the sunrise of her vigil
from the cold, hard river of morning’s rush hour
from bloody bar fights spilled into the street
thrusting through last night’s garbage
She layers mirrors onto the shattered glass
left in the street near the half-faced man’s bed.
The little lost blue car ran a red light
and hit the girl in the purple coat
who had just lost her first tooth
becomes scribbled into a tree
that grew in the sidewalk
from a carelessly tossed apple;
It’s roots hold the hidden tunnels
to the richly green garden beneath the city
where the girl in the purple coat
sits singing the flowers to bloom
sipping tea sweetened by cherry blossoms
If I didn’t know her–
If I didn’t know her darting eyes,
intense curiosity & perceptive intelligence
I would be the dead whore in the alley
behind the rubbish bin feeding the pigeons
Not the grey and green eyed kitten
lapping milk out the saucer on her knee
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