Poems: City Girl, Country Girl

A Pair of Poems for Monday

I’ve never been a fan of nature. On weekends, I don’t think to myself “you know what would be fun? Blisters and mosquito bites.” Yes, fresh air is good and there are birds and stuff, but mostly I prefer to wander imaginary places, talking to imaginary people, that are really just extensions of myself—all very normal behavior.

Maybe it’s a matter of age (I’m 51) or of no longer drinking, or maybe I should blame all the Mary Oliver poems I’ve been reading, but in the last few months I’ve started to enjoy the out of doors. Actually it’s worse than that, I’m starting to need the out of doors. How are all trees, even the ugly ones, so perfect? I don’t know. How are birds so cool? How do I feel so much better after an hour of wandering than I do after an hour of Twitter? That one I can answer.

So when you’re done judging me, if you feel like reading a poem, here are two new ones about this unsettling development.

City Girl

It’s not that I’ve forgotten 
the romance of big city streets,
vibrating with collective energy,
and hubris and untested hope,
or vibrating with workaday buses—

twenty years ago I came to the city,
desperate for bigger dimensions,
for improbable twists and bright flavors.
I wanted to see windows with stone aprons,
broke-down pubs, and great glass boxes,

to find myself in the presence of poets, 
schemers, wizards, rocket scientists
and other absurdities.
I wanted movement, uprising,
anthems of progress, fistfuls of sky—

nor have I forgotten that city is a table
where the world gathers round
(kimchi baklawa tamales akara),
twelve countries on every block,
with twelve children in every color,
ignoring the lesson of Babel,
inventing a common tongue,

but romance doesn’t pay my rent 
and the city has become harder to love. 
The cracks are bigger, the portions meaner,
the boots come marching round
whenever anthems are sung, 
and the reality is, 
or the reality has become
that chosen sons can climb quite high,
but the rest of Babel lives and dies
in the ever-growing shadow 
of the glass boxes.

Country Girl

Yesterday, I left the city,
worried as always 
and gray with exhaust
—not for good, 
just a weekend of quiet 
and solace and meander.

I’m always surprised
by the bigger dimensions
of a smaller place,
the unbroken sky, 
some furrowed hills,
an uprising of trees.

I saw parking lot stairs
where a rosemary bush
had been squatting for years,
fat, pompous, four dollars a spine 
in most city stores.

I followed a running path
where the asphalt gave out
on the edge of a shimmering wood,
and saw geese with mullets
in a serious argument, 
who, even if they’d seen me,
wouldn’t have whistled.

I ran by headless daffodils 
on a cemetery road,
and saw a hasty ramp
at the crest of a hill, 
green and slick
and way too high—
bicycle tracks still fresh,
the afternoon still ringing
with the scream of a boy
who traded his spleen
for a chance to fly.

I’m starting to believe it’s possible 
to feel at home in a green place, 
with probable twists and familiar faces,
one that grows over fences
and sounds like bees
and has all the time in the world,

and no one is more surprised than me.