Poetry

Spring 2009

 

 

Jacob Scheier

Postcard from Brooklyn

I am strangely not in love with anyone these days,
except the Brooklyn Bridge.
The way it holds the Manhattan skyline.
But I can already see how this will end.
How I will grow tired of its steep incline
and absent-minded tourists
wandering into the bicycle path.
And then the weather will turn cold.
But that all happens later.
For now it is the early edges of fall,
leaves still green, while the air narrows,
is slightly crisp, almost grazing
the hairs on my arm like a passing stranger.
It is although the air were forced into intimacy
by the brevity of daylight.
But when it starts becoming dark at 4 PM
this closeness, I know, will turn to a felt distance,
like someone drawing your attention
to their lack of intimacy.
But that happens later.
These days I am still walking at a cathedral pace
beneath the branches bending across the avenues,
nearly touching, and yes,
the brownstones like rows of lived in chapels,
like a pop-up picture book I could have had as a child,
but didn't. How Brooklyn makes me nostalgic for the moment
I am walking inside of.
These late afternoons filled with a kind of loneliness
that makes me feel distinctly myself, and an awareness
of how rare that is.

 

 

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