This is different. This is
personal. This is my die
hard era. That step
street terrace dares me 

to climb away
from those subway tracks,
exposed for miles, to identify
a graffiti memory I believed

they had erased
with the old #1 cars.
New Jersey’s Palisades spill
onto the other side where Wave 

Hill becomes more than a label
on a Google map. How many women drink
their own tears
when they reach 

this far north? When they think of Redbirds
and that combat steel skin? I am
not alone—but seeking solitude’s prayers
for grace. Limestone retaining walls 

and brownstone facades
hold in echoes of their Portland,
Connecticut, quarry
origins.  I swam in it 

and thought I would drown
in that unfathomable thirst. 

Whoever rescued me then
could need some of that now. I wouldn’t know. 

Mine has become a visitor’s ascent.
I dwell in possibility’s prairie
now, its river a street lined with myth and mud
and messages I’m eager to decode.