I hope this letter finds you well
I was trying to remember
If I wrote you since you’ve gone
Or if I just thought about
writing to you and never got
around to it since you’ve gone
I do want you to know
that I think of you,
Mostly when the subject
of Egypt or the West Bank
becomes the conversation
But at other times, too
I think of you
whenever I stop to chat
how long I’ve been here
and the people I’ve known
and you having started
just months before me
always are in that jumble
of work memories.
Though I know you’d
rather not be here, you’d much
rather be talking of cameras
and fine photographs
and about Venice, too,
I’m talking this moment
to tell you that even though
you are not here
I think of you.
For all the years I’ve stared across
this shithole of Hudson River
I still can’t say the names
of more than a half-dozen
buildings over there.
Rockefeller Center, I’ve been there
looked back at this place, too.
I hit the Empire State Building, too
a long time ago with a friend from Ohio.
We walked over at Ground Zero
but if the buildings had names
I don’t know them, and never did.
I still see the exhaust towers
for the underground PATH
and it makes sense now
that sometimes ahead of the car
pulling into the station
You get that flash wind
of diesel fumes that choke you
But as for the rest of the everything
over there, names on buildings
seem to mean the least of all.
ONE MORNING IN JERSEY CITY
- By Anthony Buccino
Copyright © 2010 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.
