by Peter Gallaher
I dream of empty streets in the early morning
Of dawn’s halo behind the walk ups on Jerome Avenue
The B-20 bus running down Kingsbridge Hill
In the last bleached shadows of night lingering
In the cup of Bailey Avenue, the frogs
Of Tibbets Brook by the railroad tracks
Where Barney Haviland touched the third
Rail one morning and never worked again.
I dream of the sound of trains, dull roar
And brake squeal a mile or so away on Marble Hill
Waking to the music of milk bottles chiming in the hallways
Of my own building and Mrs. Smith cleaning,
Cleaning, cleaning, everything in sight;
The rocks and weeds of empty lots, cotton clothed
Kids playing ball and tag and war in the ruins
Of houses begun but never finished,
Sticks for guns, clods of dirt for hand grenades.
I dream of the freight yards across the street
Filled with mystery behind steel doors
Inbound to the city, outbound to the world;
Our own Urbi et Orbi messages to unlock,
Tanks and guns to crawl over attacking Japs
Germans and Commies, watermelons stolen
In the summer from the cars, huge ovals of red
Luciousness, and running from the railroad dicks.
I dream of the Harlem River at any tide,
Any season, filthy beyond imagining and
The great spa of Flat Rock, a sewer’s top and
Urchin’s resting place after a brisk swim
Through sewage and bits of humans flushed
Away the night before, or just that morning;
The mile wide Hudson menacing and inviting
Both at once, the ancient stream spanned
By the dream of Washington’s Bridge an hour away
On bold feet and fearless in the long days of summer,
The granite Palisades attacked on rafts disintegrating
In midstream and rescue by a smiling cop.
I dream of the riches of my first home
The great wilds of stone and brick and strangers
By the thousands just within reach so far
Away that you will never meet them though
You brush their shoulders as you pass them by;
Languages and faces like my own, and yours, too,
The unchanging stone faces of buildings
And people long dead now or demolished
Who live and move and have their being in me.
I dream at last of empty streets, quiet skies
Deep in every seasons’ blue, rocks and fields,
Rivers whispering in the morning stars,
A single robin singing in some tree,
The thump of the newspapers thrown from trucks
And the smell of breakfast on the cool breeze .
I am on the platform of the IRT
As the sun rises and the world begins
Again, and again in, Oh! so deep love.
