|
Sunday, October 19, 2003
Coney Island really exists
It isnıt just a country
Of the mind, or an imaginary
Garden with real toads in it.
In the sixties I drove through
Its seedy, pot-holed streets
That could rattle your bones
And flatten your tires,
Past the rusting parachute jump,
Forlorn Steeplechase
Almost empty Nathanıs
And remembered the Tuesday
Nights in the fifties when
I necked with Nora
Among the crowd of blankets
On bay 10 under the
Rockets red glare.
Now here in New England
The fire is in the trees
And there is no room for me
Among the ³leaf peepers² who
Crowd the highways and hotels.
Soon the curtain will be lifted
On a landscape bleak and cold
With blasted trees and frozen earth.
From the warm, panoramic window
Of the fifth floor Gibson Pavilion,
I see a freckled eight-year-old
With fire in her hair whirling
On the tar-papered roof
Of a tenement on West 37th Street
Her arms gracefully lifted high
As she pirouettes for her father
Who records the dreamy reality
Before he leaves to have his
Hand shot in the Battle of the Bulge
|