Elizabeth Spires
i.
i left the capital hurrying away i carried nothing
a dark night before me a dark dark night
but when morning came i stood free & alone
casting a seven-league shadow west
i would go west following the only road
ii.
once i lost a ball it was red i watched it
bouncing down the street intent on losing itself
in the tall grass i dream about it still
& wake up sweating from the nightmare
iii.
but if i were deprived of sight of sound
if i lost my head what would i be?
the question haunts me how to find myself
when a self is so small only an iota
of doubt & longing how to go on?
iv.
a poet who believed in me is gone
but in his poems i famously live on
v.
i met a stranger on the street
she towered over me she looked familiar
but looked at me as if i were the stranger
it was like looking in a funhouse mirror
at a self stretched beyond all recognition
she looked at me walked on
v!
if i stand on my head if i stand on my head
will you say i am merely an empty exclamation?
vii.
time is running out on minutes years
on what i was have always been i only wish
to love evolve to not misuse
what i was given not!
o little me
Elizabeth Spires is the author of seven collections of poetry, including Worldling, Now the Green Blades Rises, and The Wave-Maker. “I” and “life of i” are included in her new collection A Memory of the Future. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, Poetry, American Poetry Review, and many other magazines. She has also written six books for children. She lives in Baltimore and teaches at Goucher College.
