Go Forth

The city is colder than you want it to be.
It is colder than your vegetable garden in Walden
or your sunrise over the Atlantic.

Listen: Terrible things happen, and people get scared.
People's hearts grow cold in the winter,
so they peel them off their sleeves
and wrap them in layers and turtle-shells.

Anyway, life and love are terribly subjective
and sometimes I get them confused.

You can bottle contraband emotions,
but they will be searched
in the subway stations.

You can swim across the Hudson river
and live for 200 years in New Jersey,
but you will leave everything in New York.

Even colder in the winter, the city rises like a chest.
You go forth, ring your bells and buy boots.