Hopper's Early Sunday Morning
The street is still dozing, wrapped in its
mystery, like a sleeper lingering in his last
dream before waking, cocooned in comfortable
half-consciousness. It is so pristine
the dream could be of quietly grazing wild
horses in an alpine meadow in the High
Sierras--the sleeper's dreamed eyes glimmering open
to their hooves, amidst the flare of paintbrush
and fireweed, as he lies in the golden
dust, the cool grasses, rapt
in his sleeping bag.
Hushed shadow swathes facade
and sidewalk. The windows wear their
dark recesses with such affecting
acceptance. The names of the stores
blear into brushstrokes, demanding
nothing.
I remember a street like
that near the Willis Avenue Bridge,
glimpsed from the car window as we fled
Manhattan on a hot May morning--
a low street dwarfed by
monoliths, seeming cool and self-possessed
as an oasis.
Soon, perhaps, if a lone walker
passes, the barber's pole
will twirl a little, as if
its ribbons were held by dancers.
But not yet, not for a while.
Now the awnings and shades are the lowered
eyelids of horses, the storefronts
long stopped swaying, dreamily
graze.
–judy kronenfeld
View Hopper's "Early Sunday Morning"
This poem first appeared in the Portland Review.