The velvet drops fall
        Erasing time,
             Creating space,
Sweeping memories
Along dust filled lanes.
A shrill whistle
          On a deserted street.
The kicking of a ball
That has already rolled away.
A balloon
           Slipping
From trembling fingers,
            Shrinking from sight,
Seeing more
Than ever before.
The velvet drops fall.
And the woman
            Still dances
Barefoot in the rain.

A mother's gift

Her daughter's

smile.

not until
   not so long ago
I recognized
that saying thanks
   only with wordless deeds and gestures
may not be enough

we need to
   hear
GRATITUDE  
spoken out loudly
   in words

silent appraisal
   is not enough
   over time

so I speak out
in deep appreciation
   of your hard work
   to make us
   stay together
against tall centrifugal forces
the division of
   distance and time
   distress and separation
   barriers of the quotidian
   multiple obligations

I thank you
   for being with me

even at times
   when you are almost
beside yourself

I thank you
   for being with me
and being you

         * *

the white-haired patriarch
   beard and moustache    
    a bit colonial  
benignly smiles
   at the United Nations building
   at Times Square
   and at 8th Avenue
where hot-pantied women
   in buzzing crowds
date strangers
   to share their loneliness

humidity is high
    on muggy summer afternoons
at the core
   of the Big Apple

          * *

When I consider how my days are spent,
with work that leads to work, with little time for meditation
except for a few moments, now and then
on trains, or planes, or in the car,
at times I feel our Western civilization,
may not have taken us so very far.

Not that I am ungrateful for electric light:
it eases one of our deepest fears -
of nights that cast a dazzling darkness on creation
until another sun returns it to our appreciation.

Yet I do wonder if our brilliant sight
derived from deftly harnessed natural powers
makes us indeed see more of that strange world of ours
than saw an old man's dimming vision under candlelight.