Response to Bo Pedersen Geel's: Afternoon, March*

I found responding to this poem both easy, but yet extremely difficult. Because I can relate to the setting of this poem, I found myself trying to hold back as much as I could from depicting the streets of Schenectady, but I found that no matter how hard I tried, and how abstractly I tried to respond to the piece, my representations seemed to have Schenectady within them. I guess within all of my pieces, my surroundings of where I grew up are represented only because I know that environment so well, and it is the place where I have spent most of my life thus far. I felt a sense of longing within the piece, and myself also longing to be in the environment which the author has set up. I found myself picturing what this specific place looked like a few months ago. I went through a number of alterations with these, and it took me a number of tries to finally choose the four of these pieces to respond with.

It would be interesting to see how someone who is not familiar with this background responds to this poem, so anyone with time on their hands should.

Bo Pedersen Geel: Afternoon, March*

Afternoon, March*

Along Nott Street
dirt lays on the snow
like a five o’clock shadow.

Up the hill, detail defers to
distance: colors mute to abstract,
objects to archetypes.

An old man
(his walk the whisper
of a sauntering gait)
moves down Grand Boulevard
with a dog and stick.

I watch his arthritic
toss, the dog’s quick,
joyous leap across
the crusted median

And think, for an instant,
not of weariness,
winter, or work;
but of sweet, wet air and
mindless motion.

Across the way,
from a second-story
porch a cardinal-red shirt
whips in the wind,
shouting of color to come.

*(Looking out the 5th floor
window of Ellis Hospital
– early 90’s)


Bo Pedersen Geel