This city is far older than I, far larger than I -- post offices as big as warehouses; apartments in rows of storied brick, full of tangled lives and stories; people young, old, brown, yellow, black, and white, speaking a hundred languages, all shoulder to shoulder on the subway; trains coursing the same routes since before I was born, trains pulsing five million souls in and out daily, cells driven by a great, beating heart Neighborhoods have names, streets have histories, this city bustled in its millions even before the automobile or the airplane -- generations of buildings have fallen and re-risen in a layered palimpsest of ambition And now here I am, feet on sidewalk, the Chrysler Tower scalloped and elegant behind my left shoulder, the Brooklyn Bridge ahead, waiting massive, ancient and benevolent The biggest ego cannot compete; one can only hope to participate Someone's great-great-grandfather came here, seeking a better life; someone's great-grandfather moved up and out; his great-grandson comes back, taking his own chances-- Spring 2010
My great-great-grandfather, great-grandfather, and grandfather worked their way steadily west -- the Battery (before Ellis Island), New Jersey, Missouri, Kansas, and Colorado; and my father moved us from Denver to Phoenix before I was a man Had I taken a job in, say, the Bay, we've have done it -- coast to coast in a mere five generations, a quick one hundred thirty years But no Here we go, family, dog, U-Haul trailer and I, ka-ding!-ing like a carriage return on an old-fashioned typewriter all the way back to that same island, starting another line in that same story-- Spring 2010
Silhouetted stark against grey sky, rich dark brown in the wet fog, bony hands of sapling branches grasping empty -- each gnarled knuckle glittering with a pendulous raindrop, jewels dangling clear on every thin joint -- waiting for spring, yet patiently, and not without reward-- January 2012