Manhattan’s Windowed Walls

It was but a window then,

yet it quivered like a drum skin,

as the skies of Jersey colliding with Manhattan,

like two boxers circling in a ring of gauze,

their punches muffled by cloud-bound ropes.

The skyline leaned forward,

a restless dancer on the edge of the stage,

its steel bones vibrating with horns,

voices ricocheting like marbles down subway tunnels,

jackhammers pounding like furious heartbeats against the ribs of the city.

The city’s ether rose,

incensed, electric, inhabitants and visitors alike a swarm of fanaticized bees trapped in glass jars, buzzing confusion, each sting a reminder of love, fear, loneliness,

all of it rattling inside me like coins incessantly shaking in a child’s cupped hand.

Windows became wings, transparent kites tugging at their strings,

inviting us to glance through,

to chase layered images that fluttered

like newspapers caught in a sudden gust,

renouncing the obvious,

letting transparency steer me like sails bending to invisible currents.

Then…

Home was make-do by a single window then, an attic portal above a theater,

where discovery rattled its chains,

where youth pressed its face against the pane,

breath fogging glass, maligned visions cracking like ice

until epiphany spilled through by a window-sill bird startled into flight.

My attic scope, like many windows of the city, did not answer,

they questioned with shimmering reflections rippling mirrors of motion, asking us to dive inward,

to chase echoes of light that pirouetted across shadow’s arabesque,

to embrace treasures hidden like dancers waiting in the wings.

So many lessons…

Permission was movement,

to step into the rhythm,

to smile at the drifting gray as if it were smoke from a passing train,

was to find joy not in answers but in the questions that leaped,

multiplying like sparks from a welder’s torch.

Such teachings became youthful inquiries into further layers of discovery:

Why do windowed walls offer illusions that seem to breathe,

offering, as they do, an invitation to carve deeper into the roots

where infinite harvesting of wisdom waits;

each reflection evolving from my restless growth

running toward the next horizon?

Perhaps…

It has more to do with the five and dime store curtains removed,

having grown tired of them slammed shut,

not gently, but like guillotines of fabric, cutting off the light,

draping ignorance, hostility, vengeful composure,

guilt that clung like wet laundry to the line of the soul.