Poetry of Issue #7        Page 41

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With just one heart and so many nights
you mistake this cane for a camera
that stopped one foot from walking away

reminded it to end the wave goodbye
as if the trigger and flash that followed
were no longer moving –what you hear

is your hand clinging to this photograph
the way a map unfolds on a wall
to memorize how loose the corners are

–you limp as if the cane was adjusted
for distances, is carried too close
tries to remember what happened to it.

  Simon Perchik