Finding Presence

Night sky beckoning dawn
Gentle sensations
Early morning walks
Empty avenues
Central Park breezes
Village cobblestone streets
Wet with glistening reflections
Accompany the seeker’s every move

Citified whispers
Discordant choruses
The street cleaner
The sliding steel-front security doors
Excited canines straining leashes
Open casements echoing emphysema-regrets
Merging with the early morning smells and start-up images
City’s reality mix awakening

Conscious-walking shakes loose somnolence
Opening eyes to the gargoyles atop historic landmarks
Their stoic residence mirrored in all-glass surroundings
Urban growth towering over huddling addicts of all types
Weary of sleepless nights
Enjoined by occasional pouting mannequins
Dressing light-starved windows
Poised to portray tourist-trap knockoffs
Rayon for silk
Fantasy for verity
Predatory “going out of business” choices ubiquitous

Shut down shops—beaten
Barely open shops—clinging
Wanderers drifting listlessly
Rising early by guilty conscience
Some prodding their welfare bodies to move
Others fearing unfaithful one-nighters become known

Old widows lean from their tenement windowsills
Having endured another sleepless night of heat
Too poor to leave the city
Too proud to ask of children

Soon

Sunrise bathes the grayness with color
Subway entrances congest
Yellow cabs begin cacophonous warm-ups
Like an orchestra of out-of-tune instruments
Their blasts are met with the inescapable “Taxi!” “Taxi!”

Deli workers spread cream cheese
Warm Bear Claws
Brew bad coffee
Wish their customers “have a good one”
Keeping secure their jobs
For another day

Returning home
Five flight walk up
One’s feet beg relief from the morning roam
A pull on the carton of OJ
A flip-on of the two-burner
The water to boil
A drop into the drug-from-the-dumpster-couch
Chock-Full-Of-Nuts in waiting
Want ads front and center
A few deep breaths

Just another day
Surviving the city