Funny you should ask about that
I just heard the end of the road has nothing to do with the road
and while I won't take credit for that quote or all its wisdom
I'll take credit for saying it to you on a rainy day when you're far away.
I don't know what a timeline is
because where I am has nothing to do
with how I got here.
I say this to you truly
because I have bartered the isle of Manhattan for beads like the misunderstood and
misnomered Indians of yore.
I lived simply and honestly and was suckered by well dressed Europeans offering anything at
all for something that no one could own yet they figured out how, practically.
oh well.
Now I have paid attention to the world since those fateful days
as the best parts of my environment turned into buildings I've no reason to enter--
thinking I, too, was now stone
and my fields having been ravaged by locusts, so to speak
and then a light
'la belle dame sans merci' or something more original and fitting but maybe a little more
stunning and a lot more kind
and hey she looked like you
just you
because that's who she was and still is
and in a breath
the terra cotta facades and glassy skyscrapers
seemed teeming voluptuous and glistening
and guess who did that for me
that was you too
I felt a small pilgrim in the city I am seeing for the first time as it really is
and I'm ashamed to have ever been angry or sad or jealous
you gave me that and give me that
and whether or not I die shivering in the cold
or retire to a farm upstate to sit fireside for eternity
on rainy and far away days
I still get to think about the way your patience and grace let me kiss you in the rain
on some bench dedicated to strangers maybe but built just for us
in a park designed by transcendentalists once inhabited by indigenous
both of them watching from the sweet hereafter and cheering the both of us on
for finally finally finally visiting the park
to actually transcend.
