morning after

the morning after,
dreams of waking
through the night
feel like not sleeping
but waking rested all the same
with coffee,
with dry rice cakes
and a brisk late fall ride,
another stolen moment.

the quiet that followed:
the tops of buildings scratched
with indelible messages:
womp womp,
amor (my love)
and downtown
the pressure washer
blasting years of grime
and underneath, the marble as it was
one hundred years ago.

through the stain of autumn
the line of trees
perfectly straight
along the side of the road
the quiet side streets
where cobble stone
and steel doors drop
in a scraping cacophony

the mysterious commerce
of fish in chinatown
falling from trucks
through slimy shoots
into buckets and carried
thrown over ice
and later sold to restaurants
and blogging tourists

how long now?
how much longer?
the days are hardly here anymore,
it’s getting  dark
and then darker.
night falls hard.
the city never sleeps,
because it has no cause for rest
the industrial pumping of its
steel heart.

the rise and the decay
and in the end, what remains?
rusted steel,
rebar showing through
mass of chipped concrete.
asphalt, asphalt,
stretching for miles:
if you could stand on a building tall enough
(is there a building tall enough?)
you could see it,
Broadway, empty,
all the way to Tarrytown--
a jungle of purslane,
and the crowded,
empty parkways.

Charles Imbelli
2010