Ten-Finger Exercises

Beginning of Advent

Here's a fast poem I came up with this morning. Good for a laugh.

New York Love

Self-consciously fourteen
longing for sophistication
I sat, pressed against the window
to see the cities spreading out
beneath me on this cloudless night,
their white and sometimes red lights
mapping out the land. Repeatedly
I asked my father what town we
were over now, was it New York yet?
Each time he’d make a guess, maybe
Cleveland, maybe Pittsburgh, but
when we came to New York City
I would know it. And I did, because
there was no end to lights.
Romantically I told myself that
Love would be that way. Many stops
might look like love, but when I
reached it I would know for sure.

Six years later, seeking happiness, I
think I stopped in Boston by mistake.