«one leg shorter…» — Summary

Anselm HolloCheerful

one leg shorter she walked into me early

Learn Poems app

Try the Learn Poems app

Everything from the website trainer, and more: new exercises, voice recording and sharing, reminders, quick review.

This tiny poem gives us just two lines, and they leave a lot unsaid. The first, "one leg shorter," is a fragment. We don't know whose leg it is until the second line, where "she" appears, walking into the speaker. Probably the shorter leg belongs to her, since it sits right beside the way she moves, though the poem never says so outright.

The words "walked into me" are doing double work. They could describe a literal bump, a small collision. They could also suggest that she entered the speaker's life or attention, almost by accident. "Early" adds another wrinkle: early in the day, early in a relationship, or perhaps earlier than expected.

The mood is quiet, tender and a little off-balance, which fits the uneven walk. The speaker doesn't comment or judge. He simply notes the detail and the meeting, and that plain, noticing tone makes the moment feel intimate and slightly surprising.

Read also

More by Anselm Hollo

All poems
ContemplativeAnselm Hollo

* * *

attending to certain forms of insistence lovers become those forms & enter the core time
CheerfulAnselm Hollo

In the Gobi, and Out of It

I Being invited to the lady's large bed delighted!, and overcome by possibilities Was not unlike stumbling through the Gobi Desert,
CheerfulAnselm Hollo

* * *

slowly the eye scans the page the heart beats steadily