Central Park. Mid-afternoon. The lunchroom is closed,
the offimatons back in cubicles, stacked in stories.
Styrofoam plates, street dogs and white paper sandwich wraps
fill the trash bins. Cups. An elderly woman in sunglasses
annoys the pigeons with taps of a white-tipped cane. She shuffles
with the haughty confidence of one who knows where she has
and hasn’t been and what she has and hasn’t seen.
Rain freckles the pond,
in pas de bourrée couru.
Volunteers. Joined. Gone.
I smell it coming, the quick afternoon shower heralded
in tangy damp air tickling the nose. The sun continues to shine
just as brightly as it has all day, ignoring the adolescent expressions
of one small fugitive cloud carelessly abandoned by a jet stream
lately retired for the summer. The smell of gas-belched, city-fumed wet.
Footfalls approach, pass.
Three jog, one male, one female.
None will ever tell.
somewhere between fourth grade and puberty shepherded
by two wide-eyed chaperons, one with short, curly hair
come tumbling by, oblivious to me, the chaperons,
one with a baseball cap and a pony tail. Tripping somewhere.
Weeping in the park.
A black eye blue, swollen, dark.
Baby carriage at knee.
I want to ask, perhaps even to intercede, but I can’t
Not in New York, never in New York, let it go, ignore.
It’s her pain. Not mine. I turn away. It’s my pain.
There is a world beyond the park I cannot see.
Streets gashed, torn apart
Wire guts yanked free, one dead heart
Beneath scabs of tar.
Mad drivers mutter
Gridlocked motors, hot lights red.
Clattering clutter.
A man in suit rushes by, collar loosened, a folded square
of a newspaper held over his head, the rest tucked under his arm.
He’s bald. And rich. Not like the derelict I cannot see,
But left a relic for me to see, the sapropel of New York City.
Bottle curbed at night
Golden froth, dappled sunlight.
An empty spirit.
Citizen Poet 