new york city

Blaring car horns wake me
in the light of a city that is always lit
but at dawn, the curves are all wrong.

when you have to look straight up to catch the sky
(unavoidable where I usually am)
it's hard to remember you're still on the ground
and beneath your feet, concrete, steel, rats, and rails,
dirt.

the native americans say that in order to speak with
the earth, and our ancestors within it,
we have to dig our feet into the grass, fingers in the dirt,
faces in the sky.
we have to live on the earth, not above it.

this bed feels wrong.

the buildings camoflage the hills that they once were
and imitate the trees,
whispers of which remember the parks.
(but it's hard to imagine it as nature
when my mind keeps returning to the rustling of the corn fields
and the music of the wind in the leaves).

when I turn over, her hips graze my side
and I'm kicked out of a dream, trying to cling to the stars of virginia,
because why are there hips in my bed?
-07/20/08