I grew up on her spider-web of streets
seeing dese, dem, and doze,
aimless on her angry avenues,
and restless on her rooftops,
watching racing pigeons circling like vultures.
We would stare past the river,
towards monoliths of stone,
that like a distant mountain range,
reached skyward,
mocking our home,
reminding us that it was there
that the cultured and the powerful lived well,
while we,
across our well-aged bridge,
among the working calloused classes,
in neighborhoods with foreign airs did dwell.
On weekends we would journey forth.
Subways rumbling on ancient wood,
two stories in the sky,
heading south to beaches full,
to Coney Island,
there beneath great Cyclone's eye.
The parachute stood like Cleopatra's Needle,
while the smell of Nathan's mingled
with the salty air
and the taffy
and the sweat,
to entice us with a perfume unchanged,
that I cannot forget.
It was my home,
this land of brooks,
where no brooks can be found,
just rain-soaked concrete
flowing swift
toward sewers in the ground.
I cannot say I love her,
many memories plague me still,
yet those days of playing stick-ball
'neath the street lamps and the trees
remind this man who was a boy,
that Brooklyn lives in me.