One Year Ago

It was one year ago that I began my artistic explorations in Newfoundland. This image remains locked in my mind, as it was the view from my cabin. I remember venturing upon the rocks past midnight to listen to it. Icebergs have a voice, a presence that is easy to personify.

A journal entry on May 25 reads
"The fog closed in last night at about eight. I sat watching the remains of an iceberg that disappeared before my eyes. The fog closed like a velvet curtain and twenty minutes later it opened again, but the iceberg had moved along on its journey, shielded by the veil of mist."

Seven Days

1

I spent my hours below Mercury's winged feet,

where champagne and blue blood flow from

the veins of Statuario Venatato,

cut and faced to see its own image like Narcissus at the pool.

Wing tipped collars flutter like doves in a Charleston stolen from the time when Robber Barron's autographed the stairswith a monogram rather than ink on the page,

to prove that they owned everything including the letter.

2

An Ecuadorian shoe shine in the heart of Hell's Kitchen

in high chairs with old boys now taller with a woman in their midst.

Catching their hair cuts and coffees between trains.

I later polish crystal for their flock on terraces high above Fifth.

while the sun sinks deep into the Hudson;

their inner fires stoked with Red Label.

They speak of paperless offices while clutching cocktail napkins like butterflies in their fists.

They return as Pale Male to their mate in waiting,

talons clutching Chardonnay rather than sticks.

3

Under fire beneath Magnolia's blush falling

in courtyards where lawyers in training study laptops

while I learn the sky.

Filing past slipping on nature,

leaving tread marks in petal flesh.

I shop for genres on a park bench dressed in

shirt sleeves and tie.

My prose is too formless for a poem,

To rambling for essay, reminding me of

a onetime professor with the crisis of mid-life

taking students as suitors and pen as witness to shame.

4

Spring announces itself in midtown at midday.

Women wave Victoria's secret bags as flags of surrender

to men who tip hardhats like stagecoach dandies.

A chandelier waiting curbside in a Rubbermaid tub,

lying as a victim to spring cleaning.

Bronze arms reaching through rainbows of its own creation.

5

The waiter trades uniform from black

to royal blue to desert camouflage

because he got the call that officers are needed in the desert.

War pays better than pouring Cosmos for office girls.

He says he's got nothing to loose.

By day his battle is for custody in courtrooms

where he walks the line of contempt.

I think of a country so proud of it's neutrality,

but whose soldiers shoot wives when they turn to go.

6

Bartenders speak of The Towers like a wound

that bleeds upon the glassware.

Pushing hi balls into order in hopes that they will

cover the hole in the sky.

The Albanian is blinded to beauty

even though it surrounds him.

Like leaning into poems, too close to decipher

when your eyes blur words into one.

So he leaves to go hunting without checking

to find that his net was already full.

7

My Booker is asking if I need assistance

with the situation that I left behind.

His mentioned connections to friends

who know how to handle these things.

I skate to the Pope but instead join the Tibetans

in hopes that that He would understand.

I am passed by a nun on a Schwinn who flies

like an angel through the helicopters of Riverside Park.

Six months in NYC

It has been a blur of time filled with so many strangers
walking at a quick pace in the city that never sleeps,
yet seems to sleep more than me.
I avoid times square at all costs
I bought a tux in Chinatown
I have been feeding diplomats.
I sat with Anthony Hopkins in a screening,
had Phillip Glass join my New Years day inspiration.
I have remembered again how to dance.
I have walked the back corners of the Waldorf
and fed the United Nations candied figs
I poured rum for the Dominican Republic.
I watched comedians act as a minister
and cooked bok choi in Long Island.
I filmed stinging nettles in aqua blue tanks,
learned to love the Hudson as it is.
I walked the Bronx to discover spring
in the faces of a school field trip.
one day spent speaking in five languages
I bought red dresses with intent.
I walked in a parade as a giraffe,
I helped children believe in the kindness of Santa.
I bought orchids and mangoes to relieve the pull
back to the islands.
I made friends of strangers, helped the elderly cross Fifth.
I cheered for prodigy's who blushed in their youth.
I asked questions of poets
and read the smile lines of the people on the 5 am train.
I dreamed again of possibility.