On Your Mark, Get Set, Ready…
All through the night,
I look for you everywhere I go;
Next to Roger Williams' statute,
both of us watching the pink sky out over the city,
amber light in every window, people going back and forth,
looking for the road where they can go too;
But I wait for you, always knowing what I will find,
everywhere I turn another sign that I should already know—
another black dog barking, snow falling down across
the cemetery, people skating around in darkness;
I walk along the river late at night when I can't sleep,
taking in the wood smoke from the pyres floating everywhere,
the haunting music of WaterFire playing on and on like this is
your ghost whispering to me in my ear;
Sitting, alone, at a table like every day up on Federal Hill,
someone says goodbye to someone else at the table right
next to me; and I know the sound in their voice, because
that is the sound of my voice every day;
But if you were right here beside me, I would never let go,
we would walk all through the fields, drowning out the metal sounds,
melting the snow within our footsteps, watching the trees grow
like they were the years passing by before our very eyes.
Jéanpaul Ferro is a 4-time Pushcart Prize nominee. His short fiction and poetry have appeared in Cortland Review, Hawaii Review, Portland Monthly, Brick Literary Journal, Newport Review, Review Americana, Pedestal Magazine, and Identity Theory. His poetry has been featured on WBAR radio in New York City and his short fiction has appeared in The Plaza’s Masterpiece Series. He currently lives in Providence, Rhode Island. (jeanpaulferro@netzero.net)