My eyes are tearing up
where the 62nd street bridge bows
like the breaths I hold
against the night air cold when
I am gathering myself to run
the last midnight mile home,
but it is not the cold or the wind
threatening to wet
the corners of my lips.
Stars are not winking
on and off like downtown signs
in the water of the Allegheny.
Stars are bathing
naked in the current
unabashed beneath the moon and
I am more homesick
for a town
than I thought I could care to be;
the sleeping scrap yard,
the grumbling, heel dragging, coal trains,
the stairwells to nowhere and
the bad graffiti,
the bars with no windows,
the one bedroom huts,
the trash without race and
the messes of geometry
they have made, and all of it,
to a wonderful I and T,
all of it still there
waiting for me to come home.
