Upon Leaving
July 10, 2011
Co-Winner Academy of American Poets Prize
Published: April 22, 2010
My mother tells me about
walking the same earth as Einstein
as a child, a bashful brunette
with handsome, Catholic parents and
an aluminum tub in the kitchen
for bathing; then everything seems
romantic, even that truck, there,
making a left turn, its heavy body
swaying along the speckled street
in a noon-honey mottle
that soaks through the lime blaze of trees;
it pushes up Columbus Avenue,
through Harlem and towards the Bronx,
then into the state and
everywhere is a ringing magnum opus,
a stoned symphony of canaries
as all the slippery, yellow taxis
honk their golden horns.