Tim Suermondt – Two Poems

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The Coming and the Going

This morning I see the sun,
that’s been AWOL for days,
slowly making its reappearance

and the rain drops on the windows
are already starting to melt.

As I gather the instruments
for my breakfast, it dawns on me

that this type of precision is precisely
what medical schools would want

from their students—future skilled surgeons,
don’t ever forget the heart.

The coffee smells like the outskirts
of my paradise and I’m ready for the day,
or not—coming or going.

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The Tram Turns Onto the Last Street
………………………………………………… for PK

Going from sunlight into sunlight
on the tracks of generations.

The world is old, the world is new.

A dog bites at the skirt
of a schoolgirl crossing the road,

a girl who will grow up
to be famous and much beloved
(some of us will always be remembered.)

The world is old, the world is new

and there’s no time, except time—
even, brightly, on the other side.

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Tim Suermondt is the author of three full-length collections of poems: Trying To Help The Elephant Man Dance (The Backwaters Press, 2007), Just Beautiful (New York Quarterly Books, 2010) and Election Night And The Five Satins (Glass Lyre Press, 20i6)—along with three chapbooks. He has poems published in Poetry, The Georgia Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Blackbird, Bellevue Literary Review, North Dakota Quarterly, december Magazine, Plume Poetry Journal, The Southeast Review, Poetry East, and Barrow Street, among others. He is a book reviewer for Cervena Barva Press and a poetry reviewer for Bellevue Literary Review. He lives in Cambridge (MA) with his wife, the poet Pui Ying Wong.