JACQUES ROUBARD'S TIME

Having experienced time
though the detached
proverbs of trees
 dying in rebirth
 along the Seine
 remaining in limbo
    when someone reads
 you twice
in a Paris book stall
you gaze upward
 from a speaking vigil
your footsteps past
through winter's altitude
 striking down breezes of icons
watching oven birds in flight
   from your own iconic space,
 your beret falls to the ground
watching a blind pretty woman
snow packed for Grenoble
  with her St. Bernard for the Alps.