Crossing Fulton Ferry from Fly Market to Iphigenia, suspended in the great grey arms of the Manhattan Bridge. The sun glints off the Harbor, reflecting desire, as the City of Aspiration gathers her breath in anticipation.

Flatiron Elegy (1996)

This morning, upon leaving the shelter,
Bundled in my trenchcoat against the early morning chill,
I was greeted by the sight of snow flakes falling out of the blackness,
sepia in the halogen streetlights,
an old TV commercial on a black-and-white set,
dimly remembered;
hardly anyone else on the street at that hour,
not even the cabs.

I had fully intended to go straight home.
A warm bed, and she, asleep,
who tells me that she never recalls her dreams.
But then, out of the corner of my eye,
I caught a glimpse of a shadow wearing a blue trenchcoat and carrying a bright yellow umbrella, and I am compelled to follow.

As I reach the corner of Fifth and Sixteenth,
before me, across the Avenue, the wind dislodges a huge drift from atop a roof and
the shadow figure disappears into the swirl of snow
Leaving me standing before the loft
Where I met you on a summer evening more than a dozen years ago
Before you took me, nine years too late, back to Williamsburg
And to your bed.
I had caught you, that second time, on the cusp:
You had just quit dance and the bed of your lover after many years.

The snow falling through the streetlight on the avenue
Casts a flickering white light on a window full of Victorian Christmas cards:
Inside, cherubs watch over children, all rose and ivory,
Who sit seated round a hearth, expectation on their faces.
Stockings, lumpy with coal or candy, hang from the mantle;
Candles flicker against the window panes.
Outside, the night, a cold black void.
Somewhere Saint Nick is lost in the empyrean
and Wee Willie Winkie makes his insistent rounds
tolling the hour for children long since departed.

I am shaken from my reverie by a clump of snow from above.
I look around for the thrower,
but the street is empty. The dead outnumber the living at that hour.
I look up.
Above me, a bare-breasted caryatid smiles down at me knowingly
with your smile as I emerged from the shower off the kitchen
at your place in Brooklyn, and found that you had hidden my clothes and my towel,
and were seated at the table discussing art and dance and fungi
with your roommates,
leaving me to skulk naked behind them against the wall
and mouth mock-curses at you over their heads.
And you, at your coffee,
one breast peeking from beneath your silk wrap,
mischief in your eyes and that knowing smile on your lips,
but did not give me away.

We had come to each other the night before without words,
joined flesh, locked eyes to souls as you came.
And I saw in such depths the pain and transgressions
of a young girl, but did not look away until you, at last,
averted your own gaze.
Afterwards, I cradled you while you wept,
brushed salty tears from your eyelashes with my lips.
Still later, you asked me why I had continued to love you
for all of those years?
An impossible question, I thought:
How do you describe falling in love with art and a girl in the same moment?
The air in my mouth grew heavy, my tongue flailed against it.
I finally stammered that it had to do with
your being a dancer.
But I am no longer, you said, and you turned away.

More snow from above. I look up.
The bare-breasted stone nymph now wears the trickster’s visage.
Pygmalion gazing at Galatea
I start to mutter a prayer beneath my breath, then think better of it.
“Be careful what you wish for; you just might get it.”
Pygmalion at the altar of Venus, afraid to utter the name of his beloved.

I steady myself against the stone, set one foot before the other,
start to walk away,
up Fifth Avenue towards the Flatiron Building and the Park,
balm for an aching soul.
The domes and spires of the old buildings,
lit by floodlights from below, appear and disappear in time,
cut off by the swirling snow from their much-altered street facades.
On the Avenue it is the late 20th century
but in the sky the past holds reign:
Steichen and Stieglitz just around the corner. I keep looking up.

At 22nd Street the the sinuous curves of the Flatiron Building
Suddenly materialize out of a black shadow behind the snow.
Hello, old friend.
I briefly consider running back to my apartment to grab my camera.
Time, however, is fleeting.
Though it is still quite dark the longer I delay
the greater the likelihood that I will have lost this moment of darkness and light
by the time I return.
It’s that old dilemma: wanting to record something of moment
without disturbing the experiencing of it.

I decide against the trip
And instead cross 23rd Street to the Toy Center.
Across Fifth Avenue, in the park the star at the top of the war memorial
glows softly for the lost doughboys trying to find their way home from the Argonne Forest.
I wish that I knew a tenth of what it has seen.
Behind it, the clock on the campanile burns incandescent from the 1930’s.
Six fifteen: It will be getting light soon.

I head instead to a local diner for
a cup of coffee and warm hash browns.
It is only when I am inside that I realize how wet and cold I am.
Another early morning, three a.m.:
The rain beats against the panes of your window.
In the corner, your space heater sputters and casts an infernal glow.
Sadly deflated, my cock has withdrawn into me
and each of us, into ourselves,
We lie facing away from each other.
I will hear you swallowing throughout the early morning hours.
Dawn cannot come too soon.

The potatoes are without taste. I reach for the salt shaker.
It’s the Morton Salt girl making semaphore signals with her umbrella.
When it rains, it pours.

© 1996, Peter Basta Brightbill

Survivors

I raise small questions: Can time arc backwards? Does love live on?

In some tiny antechamber of my soul it will always be not-quite-dawn.

I did not know these things then:

that my hands on your flesh were his hands instead,
that my tender words of succor were his seduction as well.

Oh, that a father's love could beget a daughter's hell.

Three of us, that night, lying in the bed

two of us dying, the other never-quite-dead.

©1998 Peter Basta Brightbill