Lost in Red Hook: For P, Stylist and Connoisseur

When Mercury was in retrograde

And Saturn was in full glory

Dark eyes stared stone cold

From a woman in overalls

a statue seared in a space I’ve never known

So I called to you as if I’d grown

And you drifted lost across iconic city-scape.

You are the Owl of Williamsburg

The coin of a thousand dreams

Whom Athena chose

For your prescient eye and practiced pose.

When in a booth beneath the fox and crow

I asked bemused:

What ails you?

What do you fear?

You met me with irenic smiles

then solemn eyes slowly closed

but listless is treacherous and I can't play cool

splayed out supple and in the mood,

I fell for the artful ruse

as one more fitful fool.

If my guts could cry out across the elevated screaming highways

Brooklyn walls would fall

Eurydice would rise

We’d sit by cool lakes

I would catch trout

and you would bake pie.

Then we’d really feel it

first as a young boy and girl

Under iridescent skies

Then as great trees

rooted by rivers

Where no one dare cry.