Battery Park

After the drizzle and
brooding fog cleared, the city

gleamed in the honeyed sun!
The philosopher

in his ragged raincoat
licked his bigass cigar

with relish, the luxury
liner cruised by, trailing

"We Got a Party Goin' On"
roiling in its wake, like

some sweet axiom
of consciousness!

Oh the deep mental
postulations and

precepts that flowed almost
playfully as he walked

among the Hmong
fishermen commandeering

multiple rods cast
in the mighty Hudson!

He scanned the surface for
signs, for trepidations,

for scintillations of
preternatural fishness

but all he spotted was
a world trapped in aesthetics,

women cradling hands,
children dressed like bees

and wizards, barechested
joggers slick with sweat

and the air filled with a
polyglot of dialects,

you cannot square the mental
istic with the carnal

or carnival, the flesh
or the rotting vegetables

in the park or the vacant
eyes of the men selling

trinkets and plantains and
I love NY t-shirts

under the dying sycamores
at the Liberty pier.

This is Battery Park.
You lick your cigar and

smoke and fumigate your
ruminations about

the world in all its
abstractions, things,

What is the real American
idea? and What is truth?

and all the while you think
it's just a matter of

clear articulation,
apprehendible form,

like the city rising
from the fog, you'll find it

if you just keep walking and
thinking, it'll come, sure

enough.