Two Poems by Judy Kronenfeld

 

Urban Privacies

            —after a photo by Vivian Maier, May 28, 1954. New York, NY*

On the breeze-caressed,
sun-splashed ferry, in the open calm
of the harbor on a mild spring day,
most passengers are enveloped
in their invisible private cubicles—
like members of populous families
living check by jowl in small houses,
who pull shut the imperceptible doors
to their mysteries, enclosing themselves.

Only two staid ladies have unlatched
those secret doors to chat.
Everyone else is cocooned,
like the woman who seems to be leaning
against the back of the solitary man
behind her. Inside her sacred,
ghostly walls, her mouth drops
inadvertently open, as she takes
the first deep breath of the day,
on her way to the relief of sleep.

But the woman facing and not seeing the man
is the most protected passenger of all
inside her shield of transparent screens.
Her elbow drapes the back
of the bench, her fingers flow
like a rivulet over a ridge, nearly
into the man’s lap, and her other arm
falls of its own weight between
her slightly parted legs,
making her sheath skirt ride up
a little more than it did when
she sat down.
 
Her face tilts into the rare
airiness and glow she claims
for her own and surrenders to.
Soft as petals, her eyelids close,
banishing all the world not hers.

* https://www.vivianmaier.com/gallery/street-3/#slide-31

This photo is from the Maloof Collection. “The mission of the Maloof Collection is to promote the work of Vivian Maier, and to safeguard the archive for the benefit of future generations.”

 

In Paradise

Each day in paradise, I took
my morning walk in the cathedral silence,
on still strong legs:
up the steep hill into the balm
of sky, then down, by the houses
of men, along the street bordered
by Australian bottle trees, whose seed pods’
neatness always fascinated me:

each one a brown nest of birds
packed in mossy hair, cheeping, heads all mouth,
or a full smile of teeth, one or two
loose and ready to be disgorged,
or Charon’s boat, his quiet passengers
in two neat rows, blind to his fiery eyes.

One day in paradise I passed a driveway where
a woman in a wheelchair, abandoned for a moment,
pounded one fist against her other palm;
in paradise my breath caught
in its small surge—

In paradise. In paradise.