Ann Latner: When East Meets West

Today I flew over my wounded New York

Everything appeared geometric and angular from the air

All sharp edges and points

Aiming at the dusty sky.

The skyline was a noseless face to my eye

and sadness stretched patchily across my soul

like the thin layer of greyish snow over Flushing Meadow Park

below me.

I'm flying to Arizona whose undulating deserts and curving mountains

form a different sort of skyline.

Warm and round and the good color of peaches that have ripened in the sun

And the profiles of the skylines contrast like an old man and a young and hopeful girl.

There is space in Arizona

Room to spread, to grow

But in New York, I've seen you try to shrink yourself to fit into my world.

The rectangular buildings of New York seek futilely to touch the sky

But your native flat adobe beckons the sky down to it.

I must return to New York.

I grew up in the weird warren of four-sided figures, rectangles and squares.

Always aiming at the sky but never quite getting there.

The wounded city holds out its aged arms to me

and I can never be free.

In Arizona you'll welcome me

with limbs long and languorous as the desert.

And you'll come back with me to New York

carrying the open sky in your eyes.