Linda & Stuart

Linda and Stuart, trapped in their apartment

Seventy-ninth and Madison, the one they bought

Fifty years ago. No fancy lobby, no baroque Fresco

The deliverymen, in their light blue surgical masks

Knock twice, leave groceries double-bagged at the door

Then cross the street back to the shop and the basement below

Last week I called and asked, “How’s your relative stock of despair, today? ”

Linda replied, saying, “Gabriel, I know I really shouldn’t complain

But each month this persists is one that we’re not getting back

For we’ve little time left on this spinning marble. ”

Her point of view I can’t dismiss and what is there to say, in fact?

So I'm left with hollow platitudes to mumble

Straining to hear a few bars of the Upper East Side

I find I’ve not allowed myself, haven’t really had the time

To miss New York, the freak show light

That universe of regret that I keep locked in a wooden box

With all the other thoughts and self-pity

Maybe sometime yet I’ll hop a plane and catch a taxi

Downtown, just to hear the sound of the old city

Sirens and the subway and the slurred words of the shirt-sleeved men

On the town to toast the close of a deal

That shuttered the last factory in every town

In Michigan, where the union boys are stone-faced at the wheel

Linda tells me she’s taking a writing class

On the art of the short story, and I say, hey that’s great, ’cause

We all need a way to make sense of the world