Words Written Against the Walls of the City by Bruce Bond

It’s not often that I reread a book immediately, but I reread several of these poems once I finished the book, because I wasn’t ready to leave them. And that wasn’t quite enough. I really want to hear Bruce Bond read them himself. These poems are so rich, so still and deep. You have to stay in them a while and feel their world. They are a quiet that makes sense of motion. They are poems of perspective, perfect for our time. Buy here.

From “After Light”

I live next door to a dead couple / with a sunporch where they spend most of their time // not being there. Every night the lights / come on to make a lantern of the space // held out to the trees that yield a little. / Hello, I say in the form of a question. // Some nights their silence is personal still. / I have a lamp at that end of my house // that shines against the furthest wing of theirs . . .

From “The Tree of Forgetting”

. . . To try to forget is the dream’s reason / to remember. Try to imagine a night / without reasons to leave a day behind. / I have a good friend I keep forgetting, / the way memory must. Like love. It selects. / Like us. It burns. It keeps us company. . . .

From “Café”

. . . Look around. The cafés are full of single / tables hypnotized by their computers. / You have to wonder, what do they get here / they cannot get at home. To be alone / among the others, to quiet the heart’s / little motor, to hear what it has to say.