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 life

As I dodge

The hand-holding strollers

and

The hands-pushing strollers

With their acrobatic babies

The Nicotine agers

The stogie bench puffer

Who exhales like city steam

The Central Park trees that blush like schoolgirls

The skinny man who is escorting his mummified

Viola on wheels

Like he’s showing it the door
And then

Suddenly.

There she is

The friendly-faced older woman

Who rate of exchanges a smile with me

Which is a currency that we will both take

to our night graves

When life will deliver

The eulogy of memory

Which arrives more frequently 

during the sunset years

Only to be born again

As the sun rises and expands

Like freshly baked sky bread

At the grand summit of

the dream waltz

that I danced with the friendly-faced her

which ended

with a V-J Day Times Square sailor kiss

As she tucks a folded message into

the flaps of my heart

Which will open

From time to time

Whenever I long for that goodbye.

 

image.png

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What Must Babies Think?

-
What must babies think, As they wonder why their Push pram rocket ship Which on most days thrusts them Into the universe of the fiery sky ball and chatter filled park Sits mothballed in the corner Staring at the wall like White-haired bench people Who always seem so Sad and forgotten? What must dogs think The Wal Mart greeters of the Animal world Who use the sign language Of the excitable nose and tail To communicate their borderline insane love for anything that moves When they trot out first thing In the morning like they’re in competition at Westminster Only to discover A show of silent concrete? What must jets think Who usually cannibalize people Until their bellies are full When the only in-flight meal Is a flight crew Two pilots And 900 steerage ghosts Who sit Without hope or destiny In the kind of Quiet That follows anyone Who has ever walked Away from a grave? What must birds think The cocky pigeons The Blue-header vireo Or the Y
Read more

EVERY WORD

-
Image
Every word Which we have the freedom to use Is a boy Or a girl as fresh as a prom corsage in a pine box In a bone white church That sits high atop a field of markers a million Stars of Bethlehem Many of whom will share the name Unknown. Every word Which we have the freedom to use Is someone’s dream Someone’s child Someone’s love Someone’s pain which the wind has carried off the returning flight of dust and seeds to an unimagincally distant place which is reachable solely by the asphyxiating ache of a parent’s prayer. Every word Which we have the freedom to use is as holy and sanctified as the endless death march miles of desiccated battlefields and lost at sea oceans which stand as memorials constant reminders that words are meant for Declarations of love and independence and Constitutions, Anthems and Pledges of Alleigenace and vows and plays and scientists and philosophers and bibles. There is a reason that our very first word and ou
Read more

IT'S ONLY WORDS

-
Image
Those of us of a certain age of Aquarius remember that tune. For those of you whose taste runs along the lines of K-Pop, it was a big hit released by The Bee Gees in 1968. “It’s only words and words are all I have, to take your heart away.” According to Robin Gibb, “Words reflects a mood.   It was written after an argument.   Barry had been arguing with someone.   Robin had been arguing with someone and happened to be in the same mood.   The arguments were about absolutely nothing. They were just words.   That is what the song is about: words can make you happy or words can make you sad.” 1968 was a hell of a time in America.     The year began with the Tet Offensive in the midst of the Vietnam War, Martin and Bobby were assassinated, cops and protestors clashed in Chicago and even though the Civil Rights Act was passed in April, a particularly strong showing   by segregationist George Wallace   highlighted the strong element of racism that continued to strive ac
Read more