POEM OF THE DAY BY A. VAN JORDAN

The Flash Reverses Time

DC Comics, November 1990, #44
“Never Look Back, Flash
Your Life Might Be Gaining On You”

When I’m running across the city

on the crowded streets

to home, when, in a blur,

the grass turns brown

beneath my feet, the asphalt

steams under every step

and the maple leaves sway

on the branches in my wake,

and the people look,

look in that bewildered way,

in my direction, I imagine

walking slowly into my past

among them at a pace

at which we can look one another in the eye

and begin to make changes in the future

from our memories of the past—

the bottom of a bottomless well,

you may think, but why not dream a little:

our past doesn’t contradict our future;

they’re swatches of the same fabric

stretching across our minds,

one image sewn into another,

like the relationship between a foot and a boot,

covariant in space and time—

one moves along with the other,

like an actor in a shadow play—

like a streak of scarlet light

across the skyline of your city

sweeping the debris, which is simply confetti,

candy wrappers, a can of soda,

all the experience of a day discarded

and now picked up

even down to the youthful screams of play

that put smiles on the faces of the adults

who hear remnants of their own voices

through a doorway leading back

to a sunrise they faintly remember.


-A. Van Jordan