The city, people,

its pulse of fast flowing life --


all bustling beauty!

Always oranges, purples and yellows
Always springtime, always in meadows
Dew on the leaves - a doe stirring at dawn
The finches each chirping their favorite song
An eagles screech under high mountains peak
Always blue skies up above
A tree line of pines
The passing of time
These are the memories that I love

Constant sounds, lights & bustle
Constant reminder of a daily hustle
Screeching bus brakes, the jingle of change
Consistent feeling of oncoming rain
Car horns blare in the thick gray air
A restless sleep if any
For buildings sway
And minutes pass like days
Of these dreams, I have had many

From marble and granite to steel and glass,
we were discussing Rhina Espaillat’s On the Avenue in class,
was it 1950s or 1980s NYC and were the fifties
the city’s halcyon days or is it now, the 2020s,
the boroughs teeming with immigrants
from the round earth’s imagined corners,
Hasidim and Muslim, Haitian and Russian, as we
Italians and Irish in an earlier era were. Everything will
be ok or not, the recombinations which make
prediction and intuition fortunately hopeless
and each individual an experiment gone well or wrong.
On the avenue God speaks by spewing
toy and clothing stores, breakdancers and ice skaters,
the Brooklyn Navy Yard seen from the Brooklyn Bridge,
the skyline admired when my car broke down on the Triborough Bridge.
The numbers of us overwhelm, there exist powers
overwhelming for the human body and mind.
I don’t mind but I can’t make sense of it.
Gandhi said What you do may not seem important
but it is very important that you do it. By that what is meant?
Linda said Why does God always have to be a man?
I said He could be a she but She’s probably really
a Tyrannosaurus rex. I like to be in America!

I spent Fall Break with Lisa (one of my college suite-mates) in NYC. They live in a Central Park South high-rise. I hope to spend Thanksgiving there someday because the Macy’s Day Parade goes right by their front window. “Yeah,” Lisa says in a bored voice, “right down there.” (They’re about 45 floors above it.)

Lisa has a younger sister (12), named Elizabeth (who likes to be called Leeza (pronounced LeeZa) and yeah, that can be confusing). Pretty, little, stick-figured Leeza, wears braces, has fluorescent green eyes, long, curly, red hair, and gorgeous, fair, vampire-like skin that’s freckled to perfection.

Leeza is one of the funniest people I’ve ever met - so she’s always surrounded with laughter - and goaded by laughter, she’s fearless. We’re at this posh “On the Green” restaurant (outdoor, terrace dining) and Leeza won’t take her Airpods off (no matter how mad her mom gets). Her dad finally says, “What are you listening to?”

When asked, Leeza stands up and starts singing, clapping and herky-jerky beat-dancing “the Monster Mash.” It was so sudden and funny that I coughed cherry coke out of my nose. The entire restaurant erupted in laughter and then applause at this crazy, scarecrow beauty’s brief, comic performance.

Someday that girl’s gonna be a STAR.

mist forgives the city scene
                          of so much
it permits us a slower pace

over the hospital chimneys
a preditor *****
until it catches the heat exhaust and rises
in a tight spiral

When I catch a bird's eye view
A city from above at night
Thousands of buildings
Millions of windows
Windows lit up
Where there is light
There is also life
In a sea of people
The most dreaded disease
Remains loneliness

Far in your eyes
you see a city full of light.
Deep in my eyes you can see full of disappointment.
In the eyes of the city we live in together is far from trust.
Sometimes
it's far
from here
to-get-t(her)e.

In your city
I called you home,
a place where I decided to stay longer.
In your city
I was in love.