Daily Walk
Aug 31 2014


As if the sidewalk
were a treacherous river
edged by shallows and rocks,
the elderly couple
stick close to the middle
on their daily walk.

They are annoyingly slow,
an obstacle, in the pre-occupied flow
of busy commuters,
heads turning, eyes averted,
scowling, swerving
hurrying on.
Unstoppably, like water going downstream,
parting, and merging
seamlessly.

Holding on
like life-lines.
She, whose vision is blurred,
and he, who leans against her

hobbling awkwardly

on a gimpy hip.
Who never fell out of love
with city life,
the speed, and sense of purpose,
the ease
getting by on foot.

Once, there was a dog.
Now, alone on their walks
they share solitude
rarely talk.
Has the elderly couple
run out of things to say?
Or is speech superfluous,
the presence of the other
enough?

Soon, she will be gone.
And he will walk, unaccompanied
until the day he drops.
In the street, most probably,
as if caught in the rapids, and swamped
by the very rocks
he tried to avoid.
An ambulance, blocking traffic,
gawkers, crowding close.
A spot of turbulence
in the rush of passers-by,
until the sidewalk
resumes its steady flow.

An old man
trapped in an eddy, circling round and round,
who knew, somehow
it was time to go.


There was an interesting piece by Adam Gopnik in the latest New Yorker (Sept 1 2014 - the cleverly titled Heaven's Gaits: What We Do When We Walk) that made me want to write a poem about walking. He distinguishes between the flaneur, the perambulator, and the peripatetic. Most fascinating was his description of the marathon walking contests of the late 19th century, which recalled to me the dance contests of the Depression in the early 20th. Both were more about sleep-deprived exhaustion than sport: walking or dancing until they drop, and the morbid fascination of the voyeuristic watchers. Which isn't at all different than the spectators of motor-sport who go to see cars crash.

I think the definition of a city is a place that is walkable. By this logic, Los Angeles isn't and New York is: a place with the density and amenities to favour the walker over the driver. (Thunder Bay, where I live, is most definitely not!) Which made me think of an elderly couple, who can remain self-sufficient so much longer in a downtown of intersecting sidewalks, of bodegas and corner stores, than they can in a place of wide roadways and long empty blocks; or in a suburb of cul-de-sacs and dead-end streets.

The metaphor of the river is what kept this interesting, and fun. The unconscious choreography of crowds is very much like a river, or a school of fish, a flock of birds: how it parts, and converges, moving with a kid of collective unspoken intelligence. I saw this elderly couple in the middle of a quickly moving stream of people, and let the poem take me from there.

My favourite part is "shar(ing) solitude", which I stole from Gopnik, who in turn quotes Frederic Gros, whose book is -- among others -- the subject of Gopnik's piece. It contains the idea of a couple who have grown old together: that level of mutual comfort that doesn't need to be cemented with words. And also the idea of the philosophical walk: that you can be side by side, yet still experience a kind of solitude of thought.

I think "annoyingly" broke two of my cardinal rules of poetry: one being no adverbs (or as few as humanly possible); and the other being "show it, don't say it". Especially in this case, since I do go and show it in the rest of the stanza. So I probably should have dropped "annoyingly" altogether. On the other hand -- despite the hectoring of my internal editor -- "annoyance" is such a perfect word for this, I couldn't let it go. After which I let discipline go all to hell, bracketing the last sentence of that same stanza between “unstoppably” and “seamlessly”, then echoing the sound in the next with “awkwardly”.

An attentive reader will notice how I managed to shoe-horn a dog into the poem. An indulgence, I know. Just wondering if it now qualifies as one of my "dog poems". Is a passing mention enough?!!