Monday, March 13, 2006

The Jogger on Riverside Drive, 5:00 A.M.

By: Agha Shahid Ali

The dark scissors of his legs
cut the moon's

raw silk, highways of wind
torn into lanes, his feet

pushing down the shadow
whose patterns he becomes

while trucks, one by one,
pass him by,

headlights pouring
from his pace, his eyes

cracked as the Hudson
wraps street lamps

in its rippled blue shells,
the summer's thin, thin veins

bursting with dawn
he, now suddenly free,

from the air, from himself,
his heart beating far, far

behind him.

2 Comments:

Blogger Marci said...

Here you are, Dan. This is the 5AM poem that so inspires me. It's so simple, but isn't the imagery beautiful? And it's so right. If you've ever done it, you know.

3/13/2006 6:33 PM  
Blogger r_grace said...

I love this poem. It was recommended by a fellow poet to me, and I'm planning on teaching it to my students. Thank you for being so accurate! I found a scanned page on Amazon, as well, and noticed that your entry is missing just one comma after "dawn." Not to be snotty or anything! I can see you're an admirer and figured you'd want to know. Feel free to delete my comment after if you like. Thanks again! http://books.google.com/books?id=npT0ICDt53EC&pg=PA45&lpg=PA45&dq=%22The+dark+scissors+of+his+legs%22&source=bl&ots=n96Stbe4vK&sig=cbZx6qANga_hTrktlZ_96_ESFrI&hl=en&ei=RzzBSfGuLI_2MIzf2LAN&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result

3/18/2009 11:29 AM  

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