Mondays, ultraviolet skies, Wednesday
the beginning of a plague, time-bound

flow, suffering to suffering, hacking
coughs, she can’t breathe, in the ambulance,

crying, praying in Spanish, purse clutched
to her heart, place-bound, Manhattan,

piers pounded by waves, the morning’s
wind so strong I almost lose my hat.

Joys, sorrows, older now, too. Moods
are painted dark blue on the blue East River.

Brooklyn Bridge to Dover, to Water Street,
who and what I love will not be rent from me,

I whisper, gold-bronze light pressed on
wildflowers along a chain-link fence.

 

 

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Lawrence Joseph’s most recent book is A Certain Clarity: Selected Poems (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). A new book, Precisely Now (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), will be published this September.