George Moore

The Boulevard
 
That street you grew up on is gone
torn down and built up with new developments
 
and though you have not been there in decades
you can see how the world has changed
 
passages and plagues and popping families
could never be calculated but have
 
changed the street where the oak all stood
and it is not the Boulevard anymore
 
but a thoroughfare a running route through
to someplace else the wide lawns cut back
 
for new lanes to carry these others through
But somewhere in the green these cells
 
remember leaves that would pile knee deep
and the series of front yards like a playing field
 
and the trickle that was a stream
It’s the edges of the world that have changed
 
and if they lose their sharpness
one moment is retained
 
where the dead-end lane
met the wood and the unknown began
 
and you could escape the demands of age
that now consume you



For Grace Emily Moreno
 
“Everything we live we already lived
more intensely at the age of ten…” – Enrique Lihn
 
Up the channel into New Mexico
you are the first born the first favored by time
 
and enter the new year seconds after
the old year has died
 
and the world is flush with faces
hungry for what you might become
 
You will live happily forever
or until you discover time
 
and then you may divide the world
into before and after
 
unable to settle on either side
You will be blessed with beauty
 
with the naturalness of a child
and smile before the camera
 
before the camera becomes an eye
and your beauty a mirror
 
As a young woman
names may mean nothing to you
 
until one name becomes who you are
and it will be spoken by another
 
You carry the name of a princess
and that of a great poet
 
but do not carry them like stones
let life help you carry them
 
and you may grow more each year
than in all the years you were growing
 
and when at last you hear your name
it may be someone else whispering
 
an echo of that first cry
and you’ll remember this day
 

*Lihn, Enrique. “The Father’s Monologue with His Infant Son.” The Oxford Book of Latin American Poetry, ed. by Cecilia Vicuña and Ernesto Livon-Grosma, translated by Johnathan Cohen, Oxford UP, 2009, p. 367.

George Moore’s poetry collections include Children’s Drawings of the Universe (Salmon Poetry 2015) and Saint Agnes Outside the Walls (FurureCycle 2016). He has published in Poetry, Colorado Review, The Atlantic, Orion, and The North American Review. A finalist for the National Poetry Series and the Brittingham Award, and recently longlisted for the Gregory O’Donoghue and Ginkgo Prizes, he presently lives on the south shore of Nova Scotia.