Freshly Raked
Andy Fitch

These entries come from a long poem, entitled Island, for which I walked from the northern to the southern tip of Manhattan with a microphone attached to my collar.

 

From 215th Street stairs climb someplace I can’t see…six tiers…very San Francisco…Halfway up daffodils…soft cream-colored ones (not with obvious egg yolk inside) below gnarled tree roots and a garbage stench…Followed by the smell that you’re in sun…From the fifth flight cannot tell what’s water to the east…or highway

 

Puddles beside cracked flower bins atop Park Terrace…Park Terrace East…from which Inwood Park appears immense…Cooing pigeons lounge about seated…Sparrows boarding a bird feeder spin it…hanging from the maple tree

 

Clear sky opens above a garden…“Bruce’s Garden”…Brick paths and plaster ducks drift toward a gazebo…Japanese…where stairs wind down to cherry blossoms…pinker than expected…as a boy gathers liquid in his frisbee while his sister chalks the pavement

 

Trails weave through grass blotches…like when your hair looks patchy…This dog’s eye contact suggests a “he”…the yorkie extra long…I’ll need to take my hat off

 

I wanted to say I’m sinuing down…because I’ve curled towards a corridor…smelling wood begin to cook…I’d doubt this soil’s freshly raked…but if it was it would smell more like this…Somebody uses an umbrella for sun…Pigeon shadows fly under me