The Millennial Pedestrian

The Great Lawn

My view across and down is tightly framed by oaks.
The skyline offers just a few utopian spires,
grandly lit by evening sun.
Among the sea-green shadows
corporate softball teams correctly play,
forwarding the ball from base to base,
and on the rich new turf sprawl scattered baskers.

Soon it will be dark, but there’s still time.
Sit by me and watch this flawless demonstration.
Only one dying tree, branches bare and spidery,
reminds us all else here is truly living,
accomplishing an instant
that will never be remembered

Except through you and me. For we’re recording
a silent sweet hiatus in the history of the world
in which an unobtrusive peace crept in,
right after work,
and no one noticed.

Shadows

Is any color better than the green
that’s made by grass in late-day sun?
“It’s more than just a color,
it’s a state of mind,”
is how the slogan ought to go.

And as slogans go, it isn’t bad;
true enough to make you think
and then agree, once you’ve reflected
on the times you’ve seen
a lawn turn warm organic emerald,
and felt yourself turn lax and sappy

with contentment. Sure, a
certain kind of sunset’s awesome
in a cheesy way, and there’s a blue
the sky can organize in late October
that’s deep and meaningful and true
as the noblest emotion. But
for real relief, I recommend

the shadows cast by several hundred thousand
spears of grass, quaking like stroked skin
beneath the breeze’s soft indulgent palm,
and blushing such a deep and fiery green.
No, it’s not the sunlight –
it’s the places where the sunlight doesn’t fall,
the trembling darkness just behind the blades,
that lets me think this tended lawn
feels joy and pain.

Cleopatra’s Needle

In the tapering shadow of the obelisk

a nervy sparrow pecks around my feet.

Preening pigeons gurgle;
moms with strollers ogle shirtless runners.

The atmosphere is quartz, so crystalline
I wouldn’t be surprised to see a crack appear
and craze the eye-blue sky.

The urgent push of spring is ten percent more urgent,
the green of fresh unfolded leaves more verdant
than in other springs. The throbbing pigeons,
enterprising sparrows — the luscious lurch
of life itself — glisten, as if lit by nearby fusing nuclei.

Mute, suggestive, grittily opaque,
just behind my bench the needle rises,
as it has somewhere or other
for three thousand years, inspiring
and humbling lovers, telling tales
no longer listened to nor understood,
demonstrating that at last
all things come to a point.
 

And when it happens — now or twelve
millennia from now — and the sky
cracks open from horizon to horizon
with a sound that might be tuba mirum
or the crash of broken pottery,
we may see beyond the falling shards
a needle in the swirling chaos,
etched with mile-high runes
in a long-lost language,
carved by delicate colossal hands,
we suddenly can read.
 

Albert Bertel Thorvaldsen (1776-1844)

This enigmatic effigy –
Thorvaldsen! Danish sculptor –
Holds a very Soviet-looking hammer,
A chisel, and rests his left arm lightly
Right atop the head
Of a much smaller female figure
He has either sculpted or enthralled.

I posed before this statue once myself, in 1945,
In a sailor suit, wooden bos’n’s whistle on a string:
My father’s wearing natty Army olive,
My mother’s in a Sunday hat,
High heels, a flowered dress.
Graven images of men in roles, and their woman,
Also dressed to kill.

On the plinth supporting Thorvaldsen
An angel on a bronze medallion
Bears three infants heavenward.
An owl escorts them, but looks out
Sternly from its flattened metal flight
To notify is that Thorvaldsen’s
Also in the angel’s arms, although

His likeness stands here in the park.
My father soldiers on in faded snapshots
And in my imperfect genes;
Mother is already blurred, although she lives.
One day we’ll join you, Thorvaldsen,
In your Norse sky of hammered bronze

And in the summer sun our heirs
Will photograph each other at our feet.

Cop Car

“Oh God, I love New York,” I think,
on an afternoon when I’m thinking
that just about everything
I’ve done has been wrong.

Two roller-bladers shoot along
the Park Drive, graceful as terns,
and families that would fill a bus
are picnicking in Spanish.

A 727 on its way in to LaGuardia
glides over West Side rooftops.
A little further uptown, it will bank right
and put its gear down, on final.

A couple lies,
she on top of him, comfortably kissing.
They look as if they have
all the time they need.

Ah, New York!  The life
around me — distant songs
of car alarms, a guitarist’s strums,
children learning how to ride a bike –

Is, while not exactly consolation,
a temporary antidote for self-pity.
A blue police car sits and waits
to see if something bad will happen.

 

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 17th, 2005.
It's part of the Old Poems category.
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