Relative Time
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Relative Time*
Teach in the corner room on the odd# floorand you are facing down the el tracks a couple blocks
if the train has picked up speed you have to stopas at a crossing light stop what you're sayinguntil the noise crosses you can read facesif it hasn't taken away your train of thought
hitched on in the yards away outside the windowto the track that close you have to grab it
you can get back to business back from your senseof a head on collision of spaces the roompassing through the aisle of a train with no more seatsthe only reason you don't stay aboard you catch
the car where you are in the next sentenceback into the train use as image of relative time. [End Page 646]
Ed Roberson is Distinguished Artist in Residence at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. He is author of eight books of poetry: The New Wing of the Labyrinth (Singing Horse Press, 2009), City Eclogue (Atelos, 2006), Atmosphere Conditions (Sun & Moon Press, 2000; winner of the 2000 National Poetry Award), Just In / Word of Navigational Challenges: New and Selected Poems (Talisman House, 1998), Voices Cast Out to Talk Us In (University of Iowa Press, 1995; winner of the 1994 Iowa Poetry Prize), Lucid Interval as Integral Music (University of Iowa Press, 1995; winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize), Etai-Eken (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1975), and When Thy King Is a Boy (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1970). In 2008, he received the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America.
Footnotes
* "Relative Time" will be published in Ed Roberson's forthcoming volume of poetry, To See the Earth Before the End of the World (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 2010). Printed with permission from Wesleyan University Press.
