Magic Hour

People pass in a leisurely blur
On horseback, an odd juxtaposition
Of both place and time- a city
Where everything is possible
And in being so, becomes necessary.
A dozen dogs in four hands, soft coats
Softer still in the meager sun
Of early spring. Joggers test their wrists
And happy immigrants talk spiritedly,
Trading sips of coffee and bites of bagel.

Walkers pass under bridges,
Through tunnels, by ponds,
Carrying umbrellas in places
Where they would not walk after dark
Without mad weapons instead;
And along the water, trees shimmer
In brightest green, yellow, red,
Ginger orange of reawakening,
While beyond, skyscrapers glow gold
In the shroud of fog that invalidates
The time of day, enclosing the city
In a single moment of the magic hour.

A group of tourists, young women, naive
Or emboldened by their number, stop me
And hand me their camera, me
In my three-day scruff and my leather,
And my eyes that I know misrepresent
My quiet solemnity. I take their picture
With a green hill of Central Park
Rolling up behind them,
And as I hand them the camera
And smirk a goodbye,
I know they will remember me
As a kind New Yorker,
Instead of a tourist like them,
En route to the Met;

My first time down cobblestone walks
Of tarpaulin tents and lost dignity-
No meaning to suppertime or sunrise
For the lost who could never get it right,
Never find a hold, and now sleep in public,
No room left for shame under ceilings
Half concrete and half celestial,
Where in the spring thaw,
The stone walls weep with the grief
Of compromised humanity.