Walking to School, 1964

By David Wojahn b. 1953 David Wojahn

Blurring the window, the snowflakes' numb white lanterns.

She's brewed her coffee, in the bathroom sprays cologne

And sets her lipstick upright on the sink.

The door ajar, I glimpse the yellow slip,

The rose-colored birthmark on her shoulder.

Then she's dressed—the pillbox hat and ersatz fur,

And I'm dressed too, mummified in stocking cap

And scarves, and I walk her to the bus stop

Where she'll leave me for my own walk to school,

Where she'll board the bus that zigzags to St. Paul

As I watch her at the window, the paperback

Romance already open on her lap,

The bus laboring off into snow, her good-bye kiss

Still startling my cheek with lipstick trace.

Poem copyright ©1990 by David Wojahn, whose most recent book of poems is "Interrogation Palace: New and Selected Poems 1982-2004," University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006. "Walking to School, 1964" is from the longer poem "White Lanterns," printed in "Poetry," Vol. 157, 1990, by permission of David Wojahn and the publisher.

Biography

Ever since his first collection, Icehouse Lights, was chosen for the Yale Series of Younger Poets award in 1981, David Wojahn has been one of American poetry’s most thoughtful examiners of culture and memory. His work often investigates how history plays out in the lives of individuals, and poet Tom Sleigh says that his poems “meld the political and personal in a way that is unparalleled by any living American poet.”

His . . .

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