This autumn evening embraces Manhattan
like the arm of a lover encircling the loved.
Evanescent clouds form a misty grey veil
in the visible strips of the sky up above.
Z-shapes of lightning prick the horizon
like jagged white stitches on deep velvet cloth.
Below in the city a beggar on Broadway
begs at a bus stop as people get off.
Dogs and their owners stroll down the sidewalks,
stopping and taking a sniff at each tree.
The old homeless man who lives on my corner
Smiles and says, "Darlin', how d'ya' be?"
"Fine, thank you," I tell him, smiling but bashful
and quickly moving my gaze to the street,
for the homeless, like children, have eyes just like razors
that cut to the core of the people they meet.
And I am not ready this night to remember
the horror and the beauty of the life I have known.
I've not the courage right now to acknowledge
that neither do I have a place to call home.
Oh, I do have my room, suspended in space
by girders and mortar and I-beams of steel.
I've a desk and a rug and my oil-burning lamp
And pages of things that I see and I feel.
I do have a picture or two on the wall,
But my poetry books are still stacked on the floor.
I know that one day I will leave this place too
Like I've left every place I have lived in before.
It's not such a sad thing, a heart that must wander.
It cannot be hemmed in or broken for long.
It cannot be crushed by the fiercest of forces.
It cannot be won by the weak or the strong.
A heart that must wander lives like an eagle
High in the treetops that tickle the sky
Watching the world in unending unfolding
Careening on wings with no choice but to fly.
A heart that must wander can never be kept still
By love or by marriage or promises made,
Its only desire is to widen the circle
of the life that it lives out in every new day;
To see the wild lily that peeks through the snow
far away on a mountain where prophets have prayed;
To breathe in the air from the deck of a sailboat
encircled by ocean from every which way!
To sing with a family of fine friendly strangers
to break bread among them and share in their tears;
To run with the leopard and swim with the dolphin
To love well and let go of anger and fear;
To dance with the reaper and drink with the angels
To welcome those moments of bright burning life
when all of the senses together engage like
the joining together of day and of night.
Like a blending of searing white flame into water,
Like granite consumed by the power of air,
Like thunder that roars in the bosom of silence,
Like all that exists yet still is no where.
The heart that must wander knows that its creator
imagines all things into being that are,
and wishes to know what everything feels like
before moving on to another blue star.
This autumn evening embraces Manhattan,
but its lover will soon steal away in the night
Called by the heart of the greatest of wanderers
Long gone by the hour when the morning is light.
So too is the heart of the man on my corner
who sees in my soul that same wind that blows
and dashes the comfort of lamplight and kitchen
and takes with it my own heart wherever it goes.
Thursday, November 11, 1999
