April 2020
When I came to—crocuses were pushing up
purple in my garden, return of the cooing dove—
and when I got out at Penn Station there were no faces
along the tracks—
wind blew through 32nd Street with a faint whiff of onions
and hair spray
cabs drifted between lanes like bumper cars at Asbury Park
crosswinds; crosstown; the uroboric shape of Columbus Circle.
Etruscan bull’s eye. Minoan nude. The cylinder seals of Ur,
stately people on folding stools,
at the Met—in the dark,
the peace, the peace, the peace.
A bird, the stripes of a flag, a floating bridge.
The nation’s pleasure myth unspooling
through stadiums and supermarkets.
I see a wavering horizon across borders
from the shanked Palisades below Fort Lee,
air flows through my open window like any day,
innocent coming over the Hudson.