There is something about Manhattan in the rain;
Some misery that transcends mine;
Some beauty that transcends all

When I was more wistful and self-absorbed
I would ride the N train to despair
And alighting at some station with an
Alien name, climb the steps into the
Drear and find a long way home.

I thought; ah, how I contemplated
The mysteries of life, which
Were always more complex than the
Simple man who conjured them.
I twisted ropes of anxiety and
Swallowed them until they
Writhed in the belly and
Became electric worms

But there were times, curling my tongue
To catch a raindrop, when I could stand
And ingest the majesty around me
And be unfettered by my own protestations
That this, life, everything, was much too
Hard. A reformed Lilliputian then, I would
Rise to my own mockery and be saved

The steps I take falter now.
Heart and mind are not as fertile
Or as feral as once they were.
She is no longer a contemplation,
Or her, either, for that matter and
I now know this:
What humankind at its absolute bestial
Does destroy, humankind in subsequent determination
Builds anew.

I stand there on Barclay Street
And don’t mind the wet. Awed as
Any tourist from Iowa but jaded
As only an old city dog from Queens can be.

Still snags my breath, this place.
Still calls to me to come and humble myself
Every now and again
While I stand, bemusedly bedraggled,
In a hard spring rain.

04/24/2012

Posted on 04/24/2012
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