Learning Process by Frederick Pollack

Someone has said that at the core
of your personality all you want
is to be left alone and hurt no one.
You consider this, walking a street
long and straight, its vanishing point
impressively nowhere, at the edge
of town, the center of something else.
Time itself has vacuumed
in and around the empty factories
behind their miles of fence; time
is another city. Tall weeds own
the margins of the sidewalk squares,
themselves still mostly whole. Symbols,
language on window-boards
fade across the street. There are people,
but you’ve decided not to be afraid
of them. Could learn from them;
are in training, perhaps,
for what they already know. From
the junk beside the fence
a lizard skitters toward the curb.
The heat has brought these up and out.
Bright blue, which seems poor camouflage;
will it change? It moves too fast to tell.

Frederick Pollack is the author of two book-length narrative poems, THE ADVENTURE and HAPPINESS (Story Line Press; the former to be reissued by Red Hen Press), and two collections, A POVERTY OF WORDS (Prolific Press, 2015) and LANDSCAPE WITH MUTANT (Smokestack Books, UK, 2018). Many other poems in print and online journals.