Daydreaming

A Calmer...













...made from a piece of a thrift-store
table runner with the pattern half gone














"All day all over the city every person
Wanders a different city, sealed intact
And haunted as the abandoned subway stations
Under the city. Where is my alley doorway?


Stone gable, brick escarpment, cliffs of crystal.
Where is my terraced street above the harbor,
Café and hidden workshop, house of love?
Webbed vault, tiled blackness. Where is my park, the path


Through conifers, my iron bench, a shiver
Of ivy and margin birch above the traffic?
A voice. There is a mountain and a wood
Between us — one wrote, lovesick — Where the late


Hunter and the bird have seen us. Aimless at dusk,
Heart muttering like any derelict,
Or working all morning, violent with will,
Where is my garland of lights? My silver rail?"

(Robert Pinsky:City Elegies/The Day Dreamers)