Little Losses

Morning in the park was full of dogs and prayers
Einstein’s twin walked Chihuahuas down the mall
A woman turned the rocks sacred with her worn mat
A nanny with a baby with a ball
Rear Window weather
My sweaty fist made a wet sound
Against the leather of my notebook in the silent hall
Of the public library, and it was louder than the
The diamonds blaring on 5th Avenue
Leaning on their horns
Jostling for position like the cab drivers
In the swelter of the city in the Fall.

It was all made for looking at, and my eyes obliged
The skyline, the quiet of height
Art or is-it-art, shadow and light
Colour and the absence of colour
Still things suggesting movement
Things that moved that had no business to
I did not want to write about art
So I talked to it instead
Why are you telling me to look at this?
I said. This shape, this line, this hair, this thing-that-is-not-a-bed
It replied and its answer still confounded me
So still I stood and relished my dumbfounded bliss.

A free ride on the water
A boy spat off the side of the ferry
Tourists fussing, commuters rushing
Everyone muskily grateful of the air after the subway
The city glittered in the dusk
Husky with money and danger
And the cost of having everything.
But I, for a time, had nothing
Alone in this famous place
Everything familiar
Except the faces
Who were all strangers

The night tour. Our guide
Decried the boredom of his normal ride
Dissented to tell us the facts and stats he’d too often repeated
Invented names, dates, monarchs defeated
Feted the lesser known features of the city
Like where his mother went that morning
Vented his rejection from Metrotech University
That would not have him even with his three point five
I don’t recall returning to my room
So saturated as I was
With beauty viewed, food consumed, the orange moon
And the fleshy pinch of me, alive.