Struggle Sublime

 

Remembering his lone return
to this New York street
in mid-summer’s humid heat,
he did see shutters closed
behind antique glass,
whose reflection mirrored nostalgia.

He wasn’t born there,
only grew up in his first home

away from home,
a brownstone haven.

The oldness then,
the newness now
bore out restoration,

hipster style.

Closing his eyes,
he remembered
the battered front door,
yapping terrier just inside,
forever on guard for his landlady’s

imagined safety.

There was…

The nightly dash
up dark stairs to the 3rd floor,
evading the heel-nipping and
barking four-legged devil incarnate.

Opening his eyes,
blazing sun reflected back
like the searing message of long ago:
“Isn’t it time to move on?”

He sensed he was a stranger now,
but no one appeared,
no one stared from behind
invisible lace curtains.

There was no one.

Sidewalk bare.

Street deserted.

Not even the once ubiquitous taxi horns

could disturb the silent moment now.

No …

He was alone in Manhattan’s summer heat,
the kind of thermal suffocation
forcing the discomfort of nostalgic memories
the kind he didn’t need now,
for away from the street,

melancholy’s purity could always walk beside him.

Such became the newly gentrified and sterilized street,
today’s occupants unaware of the struggle sublime,

the growing up experience of one’s spartan era,

repeating itself once again.