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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
YELLOW COIN, by KAREN SWENSON Poet's Biography
First Line: Where the only changes are
Last Line: The only wall that holds my history.
Subject(s): Change; Cities; Memory; Urban Life
First Line: Where the only changes are
Last Line: The only wall that holds my history.
Subject(s): Change; Cities; Memory; Urban Life
Where the only changes are
from nature's repetitive hand
exposing the architecture behind leaves
embossing the sea's lace on the sand,
we walk in a year the warm enclosure
of her garden walls,
and plant them with our memories.
We find them there next year
in cicada call or wind curve of snow.
But the house I grew in tenants strangers,
and in this city I've chosen for my life
apartment houses with dead and broken eyes
will be composted for next year's office buildings.
Nothing's left of where I've lived
a bride or mother holding her child up
to windows to watch the pigeons wheel.
Down streets where an occasional leaf is flipped,
a yellow coin above the traffic, I walk my flesh
the only wall that holds my history.
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