The Resonance of Evolving Canvases
Can the eye ever see
what the ear can paint?
Can the sometimes-famished body of Manhattan
ever be replete?
Cycling energy flows unencumbered
its arteries beneath black top and man-hole pores
a surging flow or railed passage
transporting nourishment through
a footprint network
feeding appendages reaching
for the sky
those limbs once small
now gargantuan grown
never satiated
always hungry for more
White cells
red cells
black, yellow and brown
cycle daily through porous openings
to sunlight
each knowing its duty
its exploring destiny
Here today
Maybe there tomorrow
Such is the canvas-wash of urban dawn
the visions of sound
the hearing of pictures
For pigment of a city’s soul
is known only to those who understand
that cacophonous colors
mix and harmonize themselves
into pastels of peace
only after life’s brush and palette
stave off the foreign invaders
threatening our immunity to viral duplicity
while trumpeting discoloration as holy
Forever clinging to walls of precarious ignorance
mutated organisms of voracious appetite
forever challenge our tenacity to remain impervious
to learned hate and violence
its contaminant caring not which exit or entrance
which vein of neighborhood or artery of Borough
flows its disease of decay
Staying whole
Amidst resistance to venomous incursion
allows us to know a picture of sound
is but a symphony of layered color
That the fragrance of sunlight’s beam
simply guides our muscled strength of resolve
through gentle fingertips kind
Such is an urban dawn’s fabric
alive with the tincture of soul
even as the taste of a street vendor’s knish
serves to remind us that life seasons remain
just as history and culture of the senses
diminishes not
Yes
Cataracts of diseased sight
might perpetuate its
darkness and dismay
But even the honestly blind
can hear the city’s heartbeat
feeding its never-ending portrait of life
its body embracing our hesitance
even as we might wish it to end
this resonance of evolving canvases
this city’s dissonance
Many things can be said about New York City, but dead it’s not, dying it’s not, even though, as this piece of prosetry implies, there are those who would 9/11 us forever. The sensorial tempest of its prominence in American history will always survive, as long as there are people whose senses remain alive. At the risk of sounding cliché, let me say after living 20 years of my life there, I miss it, even as it has, and will always remain, a perpetuation of a love/hate paradox. Such a story will perhaps never truly fade
And serves today as the source for several of the country's major functions like live musical shows, museums, culture and, perhaps the most important, financial center.
The great cities like New York City grow like parasites with the new overtaking the old as time marches on in Times Square.
Ron
It reminds me of sitting at dusk on Devil's Dyke (UK) and feeling deeply inspired as I saw the heart of Brighton, lit and pumping in the distance ...all the colours were there too. Rx