A Sunday Morning Fifth Avenue Walk
I’m on a 22-block Fall escalator ride Moving with childhood velocity The sky is Tiffany blue Which makes everyone feel As prosperous as a happy ending My heart is that balloon Which floats over the Strand Bookstore kiosk with its novel excavating archeologists As the Agnes de Mille of the wind Shows it how to do the Red Maple Leaf rag As I am enveloped by the swarm of Columbuses discovering America The fanny pack of wolves The sneaker hoofed stampede The unicorn-fed girl in her multicolored finery The Mickey Mouse rat race The merry prankster dogs who prance like ponies as their wagtails keep time like metronomes The heads down flock, pray to their phones Lourdes knows why As I am passed by The Pashminas The Cashmeres The Good Wool Hunters The street-sleeping drifter Who is being transported back To his full belly past A cardboard of hand-scrawled commandments appears: A hastily written message from God Who has left explicit instructions as to how to lead a better, more purposeful