I'm always running ahead of my life,
The way when we walk you are always
Three, fifteen, forty steps behind
Taking a picture, or inspecting

A bottlebrush tree, a cornice, the sea
As it breaks white on the striated rock,

As though I can't dare look, and
I'm always running away from myself

The way when we walk you are always
Asking me to slow down, and what will happen

When one of us dies, and, if it's me first,
There's no one's back in our photos anymore.


About this poem
"The poem is set in Bogliasco, a village outside of Genoa, and the home of the Bogliasco Foundation, a spectacular study center for artists and scholars where my wife and I enjoyed a month-long residency to write in the spring of 2014. Details move along a nearby coastal walkway from Bogliasco to Nervi, but also along the daily habits and surprises of a life together."
-Robert Polito

About Robert Polito
Robert Polito is the author of "Hollywood & God" (University of Chicago Press, 2009). He teaches writing and literature at The New School's M.F.A. program, which he founded in 1996.


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The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day[at]poets.org.


(c) 2015 Robert Polito. Originally published by the Academy of American Poets, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate