New York Tendaberry

Laura walked in Washington Square,
a cup of something hot in hand
one winter morning in the snow.
The park was clean, still quiet
absent junkies, cocaine blues-train
buy-and-sell, and fast-talk, flim-flam man.

Laura walked on by at eight
on positively 4th Street
when neighbors own the square:
old women with suspicious eyes
and two unwary dogs passed there.
Two gamers jabbed indignance,
pointed at a snowy bench,
at no-go early morning chess.

Across the street a couple
moved as one, their wool coats
pressed, heads bent, hair the same.
I could be seeing double
till they laugh and separate,
her moving south toward NYU,
him up a stoop. Who knows?

But Laura!
Teenaged once and future empress
of the New York Tendaberry
walked by hip sista, daughter
of my tribe, Laura, urban blues
waif, tweed capped but tumbledown.
Her soul-smart black-brown eyes.

My shaina city songbird
gliding by the square,
a beautiful black swan
or no less rare,
her cup held carelessly,
her breath a trail
of streaming air.

Sometimes it seemed unreal
then. New York City seemed
a stageset, photographed
in black and white, and now
another time imagined
in her passing deep-voiced grace.

Laura once and then
my natural snow, once
and still a cameo,
a weaver’s daughter born
for the loom’s desire.

Not gone. Alive,
a phoenix voice still singing
timer’s winter city blues
to love again, alive in the flames
of December’s boudoir.