“hey.. yes, trying to get some things updated around here… now... so sorry for the outage! but things should be tip top now.. still ironing out a few kinks though
Regards”

I love it when Lisa and I take our show out and, on the road,
like this twilight helicopter flight, from New Haven to LaGuardia.
I’m so excited about tonight, it’s possible that I might implode.

The rotor blades started twirling, our luggage had been stowed,
the pilot asked Lisa. “Ready for takeoff?” Lisa grinned saying, “Let's go!”
He gave her a quick and crisp salute and the engine noise started to grow.

As we went wheels-up, the whirly-birds warning lights began to strobe.
Yep, It’s the start of November recess and we’re changing our zip code.

We rise like a balloon, at first, until the harbor comes into view.
The engines were screaming like jets, when the whole world turned askew,
I’ve done numerous take-offs like this, but it still feels like I might spew.

Above the rear cockpit window, there’s an air-speed indicator that looks like a clock.
With a quick turn over Yale’s campus, we’re going 90 as we steak over the docks.

As we ascend into the night, the twinkling lights of New Haven seem to shrink.
We’re swiftly gaining altitude, this quivering contraption, moves faster than you’d think.

As the red numbers settle at 260, the vibrations have all but ceased,
The engine noise is gone as well, as we race up, in the darkness and out over the sea.

I try not to think of the inky black water, how far we would fall and how quickly we’d sink.

Long Island Sound glittered, like fractured glass, under the waxing crescent moon.
The forever-blue sky was hosting a large, fake-star, because Venus was glowing there too.
That dark almost-orbit was prettier than the infinity-of-lights we’ll see on Park Avenue.
We’ll be meeting Peter’s flight from Geneva - a surprise - he doesn’t have a clue.

As the lights of New York become pronounced, so does my excitement that he’ll be around.
I’m sure we’ll get a moment of quiet intimacy at the LaGuardia international arrivals lounge.

on ruby jacobs walk, a
small girl
asked us for money for ice cream.

she eyed our cones
                                yours, lemon
                                mine, strawberry
with a child’s hunger
glinting and opportunistic
as she held out her palm for coins.

i was not yet accustomed to the shapes and sizes,
to a dime being smaller than a nickel,
and in any case wanted to preserve them for souvenirs
so we shook our heads and walked away.

a year later, writing this poem,
i learned that ruby jacobs was a local restauranteur
who, as a boy,
illegally sold ice creams
for a nickel on the boardwalk.
                                                a nickel is the larger coin
                                                the size of a ten pence piece.
                                                i know that now.

the wide atlantic rose from a sloping manicured lawn
        star-spangled,
                                like everything here,
                                                           ­     the airborne flag
                                                            ­    above a wide pavilion
                                                        ­        a fanatic wedding cake topper
                                                          ­      against the blood-blue sky.

        i slipped
out of my shoes and let
the white sand burn my feet,
and jaggedly fill the spaces between my toes.

the atlantic held open its arms
though we weren’t, as we imagined,
                looking east
                looking home
but south to new jersey, across the bay.

the gnarled boardwalk was a
song of the twentieth century
        a roll-call of mass-market capitalism
        here in the city that didn’t invent the concept
        but certainly perfected it:
                                                hot dogs
                                        amusements
         ­                       ice creams (we’ve covered that)
                        fridge magnets
                baseball caps
        i bought an espresso cup with a picture of the president
and the caption:
                         ‘huuuuge!’
i stopped to take a photograph
of a space-age building from the fifties
which turned out to be
                                        a public toilet.

later
from the sunbaked d train,
brooklyn spread out beneath us
the houses garnished with flags,
then the city coughed us up on seventh avenue
and night fell five hours early.

I saw Sting in the lobby this morning, we were going out and he was coming in. Lisa nudged me, “Sting” was all she whispered. He was with a woman and a man. The woman was talking to the doorman. Sting was dressed all in black except for a long stark-white cashmere scarf, he was chatting and working a dark-gray French-flat-cap around in his hands. His hair is very short and white.

We wanted to walk in the snow, if only for a minute.
A gust of wind caught us as we reached the sidewalk. The two American flags, on either side of the entrance, went rigid, at 9-o’clock as if saluting us. “Jeeez!” I said, like the Georgia girl I am - or was. “Don’t be a baby,” Lisa answered, like a true, pittyless New Yorker but her cheeks had turned a child-like pink. She flipped up her collar.

I patted my pocket, relieved to feel my phone and know that if we froze to death the authorities could use “find my friends” to locate our bodies.

Leeza joins us a moment later and I can’t help but notice that she’s dressed like it’s a cool fall day. Back in the day, when my brother would dress like summer even though temperatures in Georgia had dipped cruelly into the fifties. Seeing him, my mom would say, “Where there’s no sense, there’s no feeling,” but I don’t.

“Did you see Sting?” I asked Leeza (12). She gives me a blank look. “Sting”, I said, “the lead singer for The Police?” I add, as clarification. “I don’t know who that is,” she says flatly. “He was famous,” I say in surrender, “a long time ago, in the 90s.” Maybe the next generation won’t be as celebrity driven.

Thank God Lisa suggested I pin my artist-beret down or it would have blown away, like my resolve to walk in the snow. Still, I followed Lisa into the park like a cat on a leash - unwilling to be seen as any less Canadian. The show crunched like we were trampling over snow-cones.

Trees began turning away the wind as we entered Central Park, “I think we may survive.” I said cheerfully. Just because you're freezing to death doesn’t mean you can’t be ​​affable.

Why don’t pigeons freeze to death - I thought birds flew south for the winter?

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.

Yesterday, a cloud burst in mythologies
and the rain fidgeted over the retreat

of a tidal pantheon; deities swept away
by a current, and we stood awhile, watching

the moon elbow out the dusk. Breathing
is burdensome when cars float on water

and corpses leak out of cavernous
basements. Every tablet, etched, in the cold

heart of building code was read again
and then again. It wasn't enough to blame

Aeolian whim or the raging riposte of Apollo,
now that we had marvelled away Gaia's

ozone skirt. Her amnion always leaked
in folkloric floods each time she birthed

a parable. She once asked Noah to build
an ark so he could ride her waves

and we scrape the sky to impale her
in shards where her womb is soft and yielding,

as we sour the air and burn the water and strip
her of her emerald sigh and melt her hills

and silt her wetlands. Mostly it was the asphalt
plastering her yearning that calcified her veins

and arteries, as she died slowly under our feet.
We could hardly fathom her sorrow for the tears

rolled off her torso like an oil slick
and rode far into the subway for sewers.