(central) or (part 10, introduction)



The day you go,

I will tell you that I will be alright.



That you will catch my eye in all light.

Every edge on every surface will be

Your light.



My memory will redefine and shape

Entire buildings, streets and spaces

To your temper

In ways such that



Architects will tremble.

Our history will render it a monster.

No place to live alone

Or nurse a broken heart.



Dogs will lose their way home

On our streets. Cats will fall from great

Heights.



But for every path that leads to a blank wall,

One will map to a garden.



Dark corners will exist to balance

The overworking of my celebration.



II.

(subway)



warm air rose from a vent streetside.



Sitting right down center for hours :

The trains, shafting down and up

Past the girl, were a silver calm.



In waiting, she had grown patient

So much  so that everything ran

Towards what they had started running

From and found an end.



This change was not only within.

People looked at her

          As if glances left lingering

Could be messengers.

So that one party could summon a voice

Or will an outpouring from the other.



Absolutely nothing underground,

Did somebody dig a way out of alcatraz

With a spoon to find a lost world?

With a sky overhead all motion and no concrete

With a sound all ocean and no rattle.



Stop moving, stop your climbing

One handhold to another,

And these land anchors.



This New Age was truly a prison for the

Freedom it stole. Behind clean walls

Were gray bricks, cobwebs and steel bars.

One could only come free in dreams

With the eyes of ancestral memory.



She then assumed the things unseen.

          There was a rat in the darkness

          And loose change on the tracks

          Ghosts in the halls.



And so above, grass grew and she was a tree

With old roots and new fruit.



Below, a damp leaf lay in her lap,

Eve of the jungle.



IX.

(office)



Last look.



Your picture on my work desk.

Is this then the culmination of our years?

There isn't much between this and your ring on my finger,

Like your clothes on my floor.



Or, perhaps, you out of my reach.

How so much could go lost so fast,

Is almost as hard to grasp as how

You left, ran free - and stayed with me.



I know the face staring into mine as well as I know the feel

Of its hands. Every curve and gentle blemish is mine.

Freckles from the sun. Hair-

From the tender black roots-

Great waterfall stretched fathoms beneath,

To their old ends.



The view from my window

Spots with a coming shower.



At the edges of my feet, bright blossoms

Scatter streetside, until out of sight.



X.



Homecoming.



Walking on these streets again,

I find the spot where you had once stopped

And gone the other way.

Then, I had only thought to follow you.



Today, you elude me in this city

Informed by divine missive.

A stranger to new coats of paint

And changed storefronts.



The time has carried disastrously. This

Is no more my home than I am your woman.



Yet I have felt the mnemonics of smell

Bridge continents, warp time.



Even as I call myself by another name,

Your misplaced scent in some doorway



Awaits me.