On Second Avenue

After the Babies, Tourists, Pigeons in the Courtyard of St. Mark's Church-In-The-Bowery

The pigeons land in their
Own slow motion
The old elegiac church-yard
Not wanting for any Irishness
Cement lions, shielded
Like the pigeons’ king

The benches of Second Avenue
Bromst, a great hair day in lower Manhattan
The computer loading like hope
And the feeling of being a writer, again
Surprise, Stephani.

The pink anarchy of
mutant pigeons
And the ladies faces painted redly
Bread on the bricks
The rejection of it
And the flag emptied of it’s wind

The front shifts, spelling mutiny
But who ever heard of that
Their finger-like hunting
The white one, a princess (a Gandalf?)
The baby, a duck on it’s head
Being filmed by a New York lover
and strangers kissing
while I trespass in a public moment

Landmark
Topiary
Designer strollers

The red-coats trilling
The trinity of the pigeons and two babies
The renegade happiness of their thin hair
And in the sleeping trees


A peerless jury
Sufficiently ruffled
their June-ish beaks
brace like the sun’s last lap