Bronx Singular

In the confinement of my solitary childhood
I did a little wandering.
So many things to see and ponder—
bars next to bake shops,
whining expressways,
shrines to the Virgin Mother
set up on people’s lawns.
Some days I’d straggle very far,
past weedy lots and car lots,
through the labyrinth of the projects
to the spot where avenues ended
or else where they began.
There was a beach down there,
I swear it,
a tiny inlet strewn with bottle tops
and sludgy rubbers,
mussels too,
and once a horseshoe crab.
There’s where I did my best thinking
as oily water slapped into my sneakers
and jets descended,
low and lower,
to LaGuardia across the way.
Here is not where I belong
is what I’d say out loud to no one.
My real neighborhood is elsewhere.
I’m from there.
I’m going there, someday.

 
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