New York Suite

1. While Waiting: Vuillard

Not lead.
Smoked cotton
Makes green more.

Redbud and dogwood
Filter the skyline.

Lines not crossed
Cease to be lines
And disintegrate
Into women

Forming and reforming
Between black parentheses.

It isn’t about the detail.
He only gives the resemblance
And an indication
Of possible details
That add up into another view.

2. History in the Heart

For Dan and Andrea

There is a shorthand
That functions as
Walking together
From the Upper West Side
To West 57^th Street and 10^th Avenue

Where histories are enhanced
In chill wind and warm conversation.

The day has gone from green
To a gray mist infused
With neon glow.

It isn’t the glass brick tower
At Fordham or
The slant of the light hitting a
Woman buying toothpaste at Duane Reade,

It is this moment of connection
Through laughter and love
Between friends.

It is the utter strangeness that has
Brought us together on this
Night so far from home.

It is the sheer joy of a shared meal
In a basement taverna,
Tzatziki and deep amethyst wine
From Mount Athos.

It is the touch of a hand to a shoulder
Or the telling of a moment
When a hand is grasped across
The table at the bar
At the Museum of Modern Art.

The accumulation of complexity
And the revelation of simplicity
Bring tears behind a closing door.

The elevator rings and
Floors below on the street,
We will all walk with
This new history in our hearts.

3. Memories of a Thursday Afternoon

In the middle of this
Steel and glass temple of modernity,
Across a table topped with concrete,
Hands meet and
A world of cold with words and complications
Opens into a
World, green and complex with possibility.

Your son, your daughters, your ex-wife,
My dead partner, my ex-lover
My sister
Your father
Combine into a current that
Runs from your hand through mine.
You walk me back to West 57^th Street in
A drunken lucidity,
Stopping at corners to wait
For traffic and to lean in for kisses.

Moments ago,
Peonies in the florist’s window
Were tight buds.
Now, as we pass,
The ions and electrons flying
Off our kiss
Have turned these heads into
Pink explosions fit for
An Upper East Side matron’s Sunday hat.

As she sits in her pew,
Reading from The Book of Common Prayer,
She remembers
Kisses withheld, over time may become scars.
She remembers, kisses offered,
Sometimes in lust, sometimes in affection,
And sometimes an admixture of both,
Become, in the heart,
Another kind of prayer
For another new day
Of green or gray complexity.

Years withheld,
The tongue becomes a clapper.
This bell calls all to praise.

For CM, May 4, 2008