Alphabet City

next time 
I come back
I'll do better

cc: Chagall 2021

she sews oh, so slow,
her seams, it seems,
are flawless

on a treadle she pedals
her way, stitches together 
dreams

beautiful melodies of love
on her Singer

she once put a name-tag for me
in every sock, one summer I left

there's the very feint image - 
an apricot pit's striation in the varnish
- she'd left one atop the machine to dry
on a sunny day

such was her habit
for starting new houseplants

I look for her in every window,
she watching the new world go by,
small paring knife in hand,
a piece of stone fruit

a wave

(G Series, Model 66, part of a shipment of 50,000 sewing machines
allotted to retailers on June 22, 1910)

cc: Chagall 2021

why don't roof-eaves come pre-configured
with bird homes and baths?

well-crafted, nothing where 
the bird (or the water) might breach the eave,
end up inside your home

...and not necessarily every eave

cc: Chagall 2021

this is 
about a place
where thought does not intercede

simple
as a rock

I am
unless 
I am

water


cc: Chagall 2021

How odd the language that results
when I consider your dying

your figure in the ground

yet who you were, the ground about you through life, 
is forever preserved in my figured heart now

such is the way 
of light and air

cc: Chagall 2021

if I knew what I was trying to say
I could be more specific

cc: Chagall 2021

On The Little Street Behind Main Street Street,
in the house next-door to the house next-door,
lives a young girl.

She is the wonderful daughter 
of the daughter of a wonderful daughter.

As such, she and her grandmother have 
wonderfully much in common.

The little girl lives at 
24 The Little Street Behind Main Street Street.

Her Grandmother lives next-door to the house next-door to the little girl
at 28 The Little Street Behind Main Street Street.

The Grandmother waves to the little girl and her Mother,
and they wave back.

The clothes from the wash that Papa put on the line today
wave like clouds in the morning wind.  These smell naturally 
of meadow. 

Wildflowers grow all over The Little Street Behind Main Street Street, 
because there is less cement here than on The Big Street Which Is Main Street Street.

Flowers love soil, sun, water, good food, clean air, and healthy companions.
All of those can be found on The Little Street Behind Main Street Street.

cc: Chagall 2021