The Gods As They Are, On Their Planets - The Poet's Press

AUTUMN SUNDAYS IN MADISON SQUARE
Stately old sycamores, sentinel oaks,
fan-leafed gingko and noble elm,
year by year your patient quest for the sun
has sheltered such madmen, squirrels,
birds, bankers, derelicts and poets
as needed a plot of peaceful
respite from the making and sale of things.
Poe lingered here in his penniless woe.
Melville looked up at a whale cloud.
Walt Whitman idled on the open lawn.
(Sad now, the ground scratched nearly bare,
Fenced off against the depredating dogs;
the fountains dry, while standing pools
leach up from old, sclerotic water mains.)
Four chimes ring for unattended vespers,
no one minding the arcane call,
not the bronze orators exhorting us,
not the rollicking hounds unleashed
in the flea-infested gravel dog-run,
not the grizzled men in boxes,
so worn from the work of all-day begging
they’re ready to sleep before the sun sets.
A thousand pigeons clot the trees.
The northwest park is spattered with guano,
benches unusable, a birds’
Calcutta, a ghetto a bloated squabs
feasting on mounds of scattered crumbs,
bird-drop stalagmites on every surface!
Daily she comes here, the pigeon-lady,
drab in her cloth coat and sneakers,
sack full of bread crusts, and millet and rice,
peanuts and seeds from who-knows-where.
Still she stands, in the midst of offerings,
until they light upon her shoulder,
touching her fingertips, brushing her cheeks
with their dusty, speckled wings, naming her
name in their mating-call cooing,
luring her up to lofty parapets,
rooftop and ledge, nest precipice
where, if she could fly, she would feed their young,
guard their dove-bright sky dominion
from hawks, the heedless crowds, the wrecking cranes.
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