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Quiet City


ISSUE:  Fall 2004

after Aaron Copland


Dearest Heart, the leaves have stopped
fluttering away from the trees, and the sky
steadies itself above a city

circled only by pigeons this evening.
The street is absent its cars and their horns,
silence placed on us now like a dream.

Even the clicking sound of the keys
under my anxious fingers is missing.
Instead, I pull a stylus across this page,

let the ink slip from the nib without a sound.
I have resurrected the old fountain pen
but not the zeal of the wide-eyed young poet

anxious to record each and every thing
seen from the window’s vantage.
What I watch this evening are pigeons,

their greys like the clouds that drifted over
the river this morning carrying scraps of paper,
bits and pieces of reports and memos

that minute after minute lightly dusted us
as we stood in the street watching the sky.
The river continues slipping by, my love,

and night slowly throws its spell across the yards
erasing all of those white and yellow scraps
covered with words and words and more words—

I may never find the right words to describe this.

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