“Paris, Le Canal Saint-Martin,” by WITS Student Graeme Richards
December 7, 2015
Paris, Le Canal Saint-Martin
Dark and silver clouds
rule the sky
over the dark winter city.
The black
bare trees reach for nothing
and the murky water
under the rusty iron bridge
has no inhabitants.
The streets have no wanderers
and through the dark windows
letting in the so-little sun
into the dark rooms
like night in early morning
of sleep
the water reflects the sleeping
city like a mirror
in one of the apartments.
I look over the lonely water
through the early morning fog
with no one except
the hundred-handed trees.
Why do the smooth water and dark concrete
have no visitors?
No warming fires burn
billowing smoke up to the lonely sky
and nothing stirs,
not even the trees in the wind.
Graeme Richards wrote this poem while a student at View Ridge Elementary School, with WITS Writer-in-Residence Kathleen Flenniken. He read it to open for Anthony Doerr when he spoke as part of SAL’s Literary Arts Series on November 18, 2015. A line from this poem was also used for the title of the 2014/15 WITS Anthology, No One Except the Hundred-Handed Trees.