Keeping Watch

by Carrie Vaccaro Nelkin

Winter’s silence, winter’s darkness,

refuge against the streets.

Walls she can keep dim or make glow,

space she can imagine a French garden

with cornets and hautboys,

or a blue-sizzle club with sax and piano,

or nothing,

just the dripping of the shower,

the creaking of the floorboards,

her own breathing.

Safety, discreetness, discreteness

from the merchants gazing out

through shop windows from sale

to meager sale, the brawny young studs

mustached and tattooed breakfasting at the bar,

the middle-aged men

grouped in early evening before the deli,

standing and looking, standing and talking

the way they say women do, their eyes

following her determined walk

as they follow anyone new

or not male or not white. She could

so easily pass

for one of theirs but

for her wary gait.

On the streets she feels like

the white fly among the black,

the black bear in the Arctic,

the one plant above the snowline. Inside

she can listen to her bourees and blues

and peer out the windows at voices

to catch the speakers at their most disarmed

and candid

and measure if one day they might be

friend or foe.

* * * * *

"Keeping Watch" was originally published in Shadow Road Quarterly (September 2013)

Carrie Vaccaro Nelkin’s poems have appeared in Third Wednesday, Grasslimb Journal, Poppy Road Review, Connecticut River Review, Poetry Quarterly, and other places. Carrie is author of the novel Snare (The Waiting Dark) and has stories in journals like Bards and Sages Quarterly, Supernatural Tales, and Luna Station Quarterly.