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.
For Mark 2/14/03 ©2003 Ann Latner