Crosswalk

at the junction an interactive voice reaches out 

and says to me, to everybody: the yellow lights

are flashing and i’m suspended listening

to the light flash, to the lights talk about flashing,

the voice repeats itself, altered:  las luces 

amarillas  están relampagueando. it’s the last

street before a park— joggers, children, bikes, 

dogs at the cross. relampago is lightning,

relampagueando present participle verb form, 

something like yellow lights are making lightning, 

like lightning-streaking. the light is striking yellow,

like the flash of passing car woke my ceiling. winter

gut of citrus, peels of light. everyday there is a new 

comet, a new light to glimpse and still i am struck 

by listlessness. i stroll myself empty on the sidewalks. 

it’s cold unless the body is in motion, lonely unless you give 

yourself tasks, so i watch a man with two trekking poles 

drag a tire around the track. a rope girdles his middle,

tethers him to the tire. swallows swim the tips of grass—

dark little groupings. mom texts a photo— the scorpio 

horoscope: once upon a time you were more hazardous 

to yourself than you are now. in order to avoid 

self-hazard, channel efforts into generating 

benevolent and healing trouble. mom winks. i miss her.

looking to make eye contact i find only passing shadows.

like most objects i do not make my own light.

Celia Easton Koehler is co-founder of Please, Poetry http://pleasepoetry.org/: a poetry library and reading room and social space in Missoula, MT. She is also co-host of a poetry radio show, Please Pay Attention Please and a member of the movement group “the tuesdays.”