Looking West on a Humid Summer Evening

The secondhand AC
ran for ten minutes–
then the glass fuse melted.

Out this same window,
above clashing dishes,
waiters on smoke break,
musty ailanthus,
dim TV dialogue–
with one move
swing to the fire escape.
Parallel the roaring ductwork
up to a broad tarred
and silver space.

Soot covers your hands.

See, higher than flat Key Food,
the avenues of treetops, cornices, spires,
the bank clocktower glowing green and red over Atlantic and Flatbush,
a silent buzzing silhouette of City,
the statue’s gold torch above the harbor,
murky thunderheads over Jersey
like lost stratovolcanoes.

Lighting the leaves

After three days the same,
Sun creeps through the forest,
Lighting the leaves,
Taller each noon.

Slowly bringing you,
After three days the same,
All the gold in the world
Lighting the leaves.

Laurels

You can grow tired of looking at the laurels;
June woods are lousy with these pink-white constellations.
Grandmother’s tires drift down the backroads
Like a team of studied horses
The track’s in their rubbery bones.
Passing periwinkled foundations,
Resolute in the years-deep leaves,
Rusted fences fastened to trunks,
The sun on the dark fallen firs.

But wise grandmothers point ’cause they know
The thinking of the shining leaf,
the gnarled branches that lift from bitter stony soil;
They can be burnt to the ground thrice-over.
Consider these returning flowers.