Spring Poem, NYC
Five years in this city and I haven’t written
A spring poem. I need to learn how to put
A passing cloud inside the steel and glass
Of a mid-town high-rise; put a blooming
Tulip tree beside the downtown doorman
With his long-stemmed dustpan and brush scooping
Up fallen petals along with a dog’s
Business on the sidewalk; put the man with
The leaf-blower (hey buddy, it’s just spring!)
Beside the house sparrow with its beak caught
In a grate. Put car exhaust with the leaves
That will recycle it. My mind needs to bloom
New relations: the park raccoon and his
Country cousin, the dumpster seagull and his
Seacoast double. For every farmer’s daughter
I celebrate in the hay, there’s a woman in furs
Clacking down Broadway with 9-inch heels
Who is her own pedestal. Oh, what shall I do
with this city’s profusion? Come to think
of it, spring’s like that, the tulips abundant, unstable,
Unstoppable, cherry blossoms making me
Forget what I was thinking – I was thinking
The Hudson really is a magnificent
Ocean channeled all the way to Poughkeepsie!
All that sparkle and salt mixed with something
Smelling of bed-rolls and clothes slept in for months.
I was thinking – All that piney solitude
I had in Vermont, traded for a city
Heavy on irony, denaturing Nature
As that old broad or god we haven’t the
Leisure or need or magical thinking
To long for – suddenly, over the horn-honk
In grid-lock, over sirens of fire and emergency,
Comes the obliterating rumble of thunder,
The cloudburst held in a fisted nimbus
From – of all places I thought I’d never
Utter – New Jersey, that land so fertile,
So full of spring, we loved it to death.