Jose Araguz

Walks

summer morning cracks in the water of the Ohio

There are walks to work I can still feel in some part of my memory, which is a place not exactly the body, an elsewhere. I remember the lights and wide streets of Time Square, the darker stretch past Bryant Park, Grand Central Station in a 5 a.m. orange glow. I remember, too, thinking as I walked that the Hudson and the East Rivers were elsewhere coursing, keeping different hours. Nowhere in these thoughts the cracks I missed, or didn't. Nowhere the missteps. Only the shifts in the body.

Walking makes you wise, a woman in Oregon said to me as we worked, walked the same narrow paths around counters, to tables, from tables to backroom. Miles of taking orders, of cleaning, of reminding ourselves to breathe, of the now underfoot passing under breath. Elsewhere, the Willamette. Elsewhere the Rio Grande.

elsewhere
my child's face
reflecting past the sky