Melancholy lingers in this city
like some deadly virus
lying sluggishly,
waiting to touch the passersby.

The busy breath of a city north:
                                                        Toronto,­ by Ontario shore.

Carrying a sleeping baby.
Cleaning after a successful party.

Camping beyond mountains more mountains.
Playing trumpet on the streets of New York City.

Eating although the food supply is deeply compromised.
Flying with Democrats and Republicans, evangelicals and atheists.

Flying like a fruit fly that won’t quit mating.
Cool as a hummingbird in the stream’s wet spray.

Abstaining wholly, absent from worldly life.
Two dogs fighting but not biting hard.

Chanting as if the planet were mending.
Gourmet dining, devout prayer, loving Mary.

Evenings watching tv. Scotch and Star Trek.
Taking off Emily Dickinson’s clothes.

Meeting in the meeting house, arguing and praying.
Planning a legacy as if you knew enough to control events.

Pursuing happiness as a naturalist or humanist.
Spinning with the planet, performing the history that surrounds us.

Killing many Germans, saving many Jews.
Doing less until one thing’s done well.

Fainting from staring at candles through stained glass windows.
Morning, a billion trillion nuclear detonations per second warming your
        bones.

Manipulating symbols, solving equations.
Disregarding tweets and facebook persuasions.

Sitting with a tiny Buddha near a rushing stream cutting a gorge.
Running, disciplining myself, making myself healthy.

Ingesting drugs, throwing die, drinking sludge.
Growing varicolored corn.

Participating in the cause because it’s impossible not to participate in
      the effect.
Running over a chipmunk, groundhog or a skunk.

Lying face down in the emergency room facing doom.
Waking up Monday thinking Sweet Saturday! but soon remembering
      your trick knee.

Turning the towering young thunder of my anger against my sons.
Regretting the callow dispassion with which I met my parents’ quietus.

Lawn mowing, leaf blowing, yapping dogs, napping old people.
No jets but a rooster mornings, cows and goats.

Al is painting an apartment. Sirma is cleaning the floors. Felix is taking
      out the garbage.
Deciding tentatively I slightly prefer Heifetz’ to Oistrakh’s Sibelius.

No cedar waxwings, no chickadees, but beautiful moon!
If you’re alone as you get, why are you crying?

the moon chased me through cities
growing more as days go by

I could not escape its gaze
through foggy curtained windows

I always thought I was made for
the night but as it turned out

the moon burns in me more
than the sun ever could

Greenlights takeover the afterglow of the sun,
Raindrops paint cities on our windowpane,
We run onto the street with our bare feet
Hand in hand, holding onto a parachute made of dreams.

a simple memory, so fragile & could be forgotten
it seems so long ago that we were there,
riding bikes in the dusty air of summertime,
along the empty streets, & once in a while
the dogs would bark as we passed,
angry to be awoken from their summertime slumber.

lying on top of so much history, so many stories,
buried forever in the tall grass & sunflowers
that waved in the breeze as we passed.
you're still there, aren't you?
waiting, watching for me to return, &
for me to remember who I am.

sunset, lighting up the whole world
those sunflowers glowing crimson & gold,
and in the last moments before the sun disappeared,
they hold on to a moment of time,
a reminder of those summer days.


in the middle of a town where people rush around day & night,
in the middle of all those modern buildings, modern people, modern world
you still wait for me to remember; in all the golden splendor,
in the simple fragility of your untouched world,
you wait for us to remember those summer days
that are now only memories, faded and almost forgotten.

Wait for me. I'll come back.

The doors slid aside at Métro 1,
A interminable tube driven by an inhumane robot,
To take hundreds to their lovers, their homes, their offices.

A girl fantasying about her lover, A man scathe in love,
An old woman enamored with The Price of Salt,
facing the young man with a Kindle spirit.

A foreign girl with passion for the city,
slides through the crowd,
And an indigenous man wished he was somewhere else than here.
At the next stop a man bids a farewell kiss to her girlfriend.
And in comes a middle-aged couple,
Enters in with a hatred for one another.

I stood for my final stop,
the doors slid aside,
and I got down.

A couple of goodbye words to these swaths of strangers,
who color my dark life with smiles and tears.
"Farewell strangers, I shall meet you another day at another time."

Mouse-perspective; touristy
neck cranked to measure
immensity before me.

So I went higher, to cloudy hills
and gaudy views, where I knew
a great border Above.

Between the clouds I beheld
the enormity of structure, staring
into my eyes? An iris!

Tapestries. Shadow and relief
realized in stone. Baffled
before the incontrovertible

evidence of a benevolent
face? Rushing terrain brings
nostrils, now lips.

Orbiting in the stillness,
stories laid bare as skin
lesions glow.

The cost of working gears
displaces and appears red
as recent scars

where now sprawling sameness
mask the bruises, smooth
as plastic.

My city a single dot
for hands of a blind God
to glide over.