Still Water
Prose Poems
Copyright @ 1989 by Arthur Garfunkel
ISBN 0-525-24795-5
Used by persmission of Author - All Rights Reserved
40
Now imagine a scale with sunrise equal to birth.
Let a spring day begin at 7 am, and end in the
night at 9; let 9 be
set equal to death.
Imagine the life of a person was 84 years, and
you have a proportional
scale: 14 hours equal
84 years.
I am a middle child, 42.
In a muddle in the middle of the middle, it is
2 in the afternoon for
me.
At twenty-to-two I am walking from the center of
Sheffield to the hills
in the west.
I'll only be out about 36 years, and return when
the sun starts to fade.
I had breakfast in Queens;
Spent the morning in
school;
Fame struck at 11.
Bridge played at noon.
Then I started the afternoon off with a marriage
that lasted for twenty
minutes.
Ten seconds before a quarter-to-one I fell deep-
ly completely in love.
For forty minutes we lived by the sea and strayed
among billowy
clouds…being the day was young.
Now it's a quarter-to-three.
I am under a tree in a
town park.
The sun is still high, the day is sweet, and no-
body thinks of the
night now.
The years pass invisibly…a minute is 25 days.
What is to be done with the rest of the day?
Atlantic crossingJuly 1984