In the Used To Time
There was a guy who’d sing
his way to work, walking on the path
I’d bike down,
and he’d sing
at the top of his lungs, and
sometimes he’d close his eyes
and sometimes he’d throw his arms up
and sometimes he’d do a little sway and snap
of the fingers and the string bag
on his back
would sway the other way.
I’d slow down to catch
a whiff of his high notes
the wiggle of his hips
this tiny universe
of ordinary joy
made bigger on days
when I couldn’t locate my own.
Where is he now
in this time of pause
this stuck silence,
this used to
this time when we don’t have voices
to question our lack of voices
this time when we look at our hands
like they’re victims?
Nancy Krygowski is the author of "The Woman in the Corner" (University of Pittsburgh Press), which was named one of the top 100 (or so) books of poetry for 2020 by Library Journal. Her first book, Velocity, won the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize from the University of Pittsburgh Press. She is a recipient of a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship, a Pittsburgh Foundation Grant, and several residencies. Nancy spent many years teaching English to refugees and immigrants. Now she teaches poetry workshops at CMU and in Carlow University’s Madwomen in the Attic writing program.
