Brooklyn fragment

Garlic bread on a board
Old wood counters, etched with cuts
Cups and wicker
Pots hung on the makeshift wall
Tea brews

You can lean through plants here
And see Brooklyn
Through a high kitchen window
Try not to topple the handmade vase

A house of music
And movies — old black-and-whites
And wine
In her room, a futon on the floor,

It took me how long to figure
I wasn’t there to fix
Her computer?
Some men drink liquor
Or golf the time away
But for me life has a certain sorrow
Scenting my fingers still next day

I was young I was old
But I was mostly in between
The music was fine
And the books were fine
The stars were wrong
— but the movies were fine

When I left there, we were smiling
Unashamed and unfulfilled
With not much left to say
On her desk sat a working computer
And in my pocket some notes
On the music she’d
Played
Through the night

World Trade Center at Lunchtime on a Weekday

a breeze cools me
sun-blind before
a sparkling fountain
luster of heavy power
this plaza, impact crater
of money
white shirts, student backpacks
the rustle of sandwich papers
and the fountain.
dirty pigeons scavenge,
feathers musty in the sun.
a bronze ball of involving might
rivets this place
to the earth

Ginkgo

It is easy,
in the season of renewal,
to take a greening twig for a sign
that life is not a losing
proposition,

That we aren’t just
a pinch of food
hanging uneaten on the lip of God,

When
past the hemline,
flesh leaps in dolphin curves,
tracing warm trajectories
beneath synthetic seas.

A swish, a dimple,
Spring’s message is simple:
Bifurcate and beat the curve

Which is why
the oldest phylum tree
still blossoms
in the shadow of cities.

Ode to an Apple

Thanks to the Mother
For her sweet red gift
The answer to every compulsion
Whether chewed on the avenue
Or downed as wine
The apple offers up its service
To pass time and satisfy
The hungry soul
In a hungry world