Is This Thing On?

I guess I might be accused of having written too many poems about New York. This one is kind of specific, though, about a revelation from this most recent trip that has kind of stuck with me.

THE END OF NEW YORK


I’ve walked these streets
A thousand times, a thousand ways;
Up town, down town, all around the town
In this crazy cornucopia
Where anything is possible, everything and nothing
Is close at hand, around the corner.
You ask me why I go to Washington Square Park, I tell you sir,
Because I can see the end of it, plot a course across it,
Take a shooting from the corner of a building,
And plot longitude and azimuth.
Smooth sailing for this sailor of urban climes.

You ask me why I sail through the village,
I tell you, sir, the tide;
The tide draws me down, pulls me through Chinatown and Little Italy
Across Wall street, past Battery Park
To the dark, flat waters.
There are no monsters here.
The monsters are all on display
Up at the Museum of Natural History.

You ask me why I come here, sir, and I will tell you,
Hell if I know; you can’t even see
The ocean from here. But there is something comforting
About looking across the sound at Long Island.
I don’t know why. But I’ve always known it.
Somehow always known it. That somehow,
Somewhere, somehow, some day,
There would be a poem
At the end of New York.