I’m a city boy, the country freaks me out in large doses, but I have plenty of friends that need to escape the city for a while to be refreshed. I’m beginning to understand that more, but I think this poem of New York is very fitting for my love of the city over time in the rugged outdoors.
Claudia Menza - You Say You Like The Country
“You say you like the country,
how the pond snuggles up to your house
and birds hold forth at the picture window
You say the sky is
full of stars, constellations
to light your way…
I prefer a twilight street in rain,
the long, slow swish of cars,
a slick of rainbows in their wake,
voices refracted through silvery sheets
like parents in another room,
eerie yet comforting,
protection as night comes on.
I prefer my apartment at 6:00 a.m.,
a single Mourning Dove cooing in
the primitive arms of the Ailanthus.
Clock radios burst into song,
the giant rolls out of bed,
joggers pace the street,
leopards in spandex,
then the dogs come sniffing,
pulling sleepy companions to
secrets in concrete.
I like an outdoor cafe,
the symmetry of umbrella
drawing sun to their crowns,
The intimacy of lunch
in their generous shade.
I live for a cab driver with
a snappy line,
a walk through Chinatown,
each telephone booth a pagoda for one,
restaurants defended by dragons
(you don’t get dragons in the country anymore),
fish so fresh they’re
jumping in their baskets.
And if I liked mimes (Annoying creatures.
Everybody hates them but nobody wants to say so.)
then a mime in Central Park.
It’s no Currier and Ives but
how many ponds with skaters
can you look at? I’d rather
the Christmas windows at Lord & Taylor,
watching children with
mittens of chestnuts
press to a scene from
Currier and Ives,
faces bright with cold, with curiosity.
You want me to trade this in for
a babbling brook?
Brooks are nice, but brooks are easy to celebrate,
the proverbial good without evil,
no attempts at your core,
nothing that scrapes the bone
like the collective frenzy of
a lunatics’ ball,
a kaleidoscope gone mad…
And if it’s the miracle of nature you want,
which is more the miracle:
that field of daisies behind your house
or that one crocus pushing up through
the sidewalk on Bank Street?
Peace of mind is what I mean,
this quilt of roofs
our lively patchwork,
this urban potpourri,
this hybrid vigor,
no constraint of
white picket fence,
not how much space you have but
how much space you are.”
