Decades

Lynda Hull lived for only ten more years after writing this poem. There was no reason, at the end of her third decade, for anybody to assume that three-quarters of her life was gone. There is no reason for any of us to presume we have a tomorrow. It's good to remember this, if only so that we can more fully live the days and hours we do have, while we have them. There's much to be said to enjoying what we have before it is lost to living, becoming memory alone.

At Thirty
Lynda Hull

Whole years I knew only nights: automats
& damp streets, the Lower East Side steep

with narrow rooms where sleepers turn beneath
alien skies. I ran when doorways spoke

rife with smoke & zippers. But it was only the heart's
racketing flywheel stuttering I want, I want

until exhaustion, until I was a guest in the yoke
of my body by the last margin of land where the river

mingles with the sea & far off daylight whitens,
a rending & yielding I must kneel before, as

barges loose glittering mineral freight
& behind me façades gleam with pigeons

folding iridescent wings. Their voices echo
in my voice naming what is lost, what remains.