No Weeping Willows in Greenwich Village
-
- The Village is quiet tonight.
The Nuyorican Cafe sleeps like a dog
awaiting a new day.
St. Marks Place is desolate without its
fusion of color and light,
an empty nub within the East Village.
The lower East Side slumbers
as icy mist tip toes over its body
across cement and trees.
The night is
a soliloquy whispered across wet pavement.
Tonight the park is empty.
I sit on a bench
in Washington Square
snow breathes across my face
as it sweeps through the park.
-
- Earlier in Central Park
a distant saxophone on a hilltop,
a solitary man in a grey coat
played to the oncoming
dawn.
Tears drizzled down his
cheeks near the Delacorte Theater.
I wanted to ask why he was crying
but before I could,
the law cornered him
at the 86th Street transverse,
slapped the poor slob in cuffs,
ran him in for disturbing
the peace. Whose peace?
Certainly not mine.
-
- So I wandered back to
Greenwich Village,
to die on a cold
winter night.
Waiting for the snow to
stop.
To die on a park bench
my feet drawing
butterflies in the fresh fallen snow.
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