Nature’s Heterogeneous City

Seems just yesterday the sun arced

Over precarious ice

The street’s one elm

Leaned its naked branches with the wind Bringing winter’s announcement

A Coney Island cat crouched puzzled

Gradual crusting snow layering

The boardwalk a ribbon of white awaiting the gray

Mister Cat sprung back into dumpster heaven

Closed his eyes

And returned to his lone-bird dream

The one always disappearing

Over horizon’s edge

A few blocks away

Anxious hormones kept rebellious teens

Of mere rip-torn jeans and NFL jerseys

Rubbing their friction memories

Into goose-bumped skin

Frozen leaves scurried left and right

Separated from their bark insulated origin

The once virile tree sap

Now but a cryonic life flow

Awaiting spring’s resurrection

Somewhere

A corner-park’s snowman

Bowed forgiveness to the stinging wind

Its shivering cold prepared girth and pride

For tomorrow’s collapse

Beneath Time’s Square lights

Heavy metal leapt from SUV windows

Igniting crystal air

Into a vortex of tribal dance sensations

Vibrations warming all in its path

Yesterday’s season-change

Like a surprise party

Thrown on a whim

Roared through the city’s trenches

Beneath skyscraper walls of protection

As if birthing another Also Sprach Zarathustra

Daring frozen tears to fall

Central Park’s tree branches

Clustered and embraced each other

Like mouths searching for lips of warmth

While a lone photographer

Adorned in raccoon coat

Pointed her camera at breathing drifts

Becoming icing for fantasy’s deep freeze cake

At city’s center

Twisting cables of struggling semaphores

Blinked for mercy

As the insistent primal howl echoed

Across pot holed roadways

And iron slabs of street repair

Above underground steel tracks

Awaiting metro’s ignited contact

As dawn broke

Veined tunnels continued swallowing

The rushing energy astride quickened steps

Running feet

Shoving elbows and shoulders

City dweller anxiety

Cascaded down entrance stairwells

Boarded subway cars

Merged into the city’s synaptic darkness

And awaited their stop

Most likely yet another insulated destination

Where nature happening

Might once again go unnoticed

Never to be recalled

Unless…