And Leaving After Time

Our train curved in to the station. We'll stop for a day, we said, a few days - the cathedral is famous, the octopus men are something to see. We stayed near the park, undecided, train schedule ready. Days passed we'll go to this cafe or that cafe, we said. We'll walk the hillside steps once more. We'll visit the sea again. And again. The schedule crumpled. Creases tore. Then went lost - beneath a bench, behind a bed, on a table after wine. The days became where for coffee? At two or three? When to eat? Early or Late? What to do? What to do? Days passed. And with purpose sometimes, ennui sometimes, we began to work within: I'll go alone. You spend too much time. I think you. You seem to until yesterday and the red roofs, the octopus urns stacked lip to lip, the sun - its long, shimmering line down the sea. All this so easy again. And today, the timetable at the ticket window easy to understand, coach-steps easy to climb. In a room near the park, the window open for light, a woman leans her mop, opens drawers for a sock or change, finds a tattered schedule - time-rows and columns down come true at last.

William Snyder, Jr. teaches writing and literature at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota. He has published poetry in Apalachee Quarterly, Southern Humanities Review, The Boston Phoenix, and The Midwest Quarterly; fiction in Beloit Fiction Journal and Midland Review.

Copyright National Forum: Phi Kappa Phi Journal Spring 1997
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