The Rule of Thirds
In a picture of a friend walking toward me at a train station,
a woman, slung with luggage, wears the bluest thing:
a wound scarf.
The scene is quivering unfocused with urine yellow bulbs,
blackened grays, the silver screen of Welsh winter daylight a sliver
above a parked train.
Veronica is caught mid-stride, cold weather cheekbones rosed,
hands pocketed, about to dodge the pendulous nylon weight that the woman
has precariously hung
from what has to be a strong left wrist, where also clung are a sooty
purple umbrella, a copy of Y Cymro, and the end of the scarf the color
of skies elsewhere.
This picture hangs above my desk, clothespinned to a tightly stretched
length of twine: the picture of the woman with all the bags and
the bluest thing,
barreling toward my friend’s oblivious grin; the news in her paper,
the contents of her bags, and escaping the urine yellow station lights
ideas like fuel
for her grip on that turquoise scarf and her mad dash
across my inconsequential frame of reference, my lost grid,
my foreign flash.
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