Driving through the Bronx

Driving through the Bronx









Driving through the Bronx,

parks run for a couple of miles,

rolling woodlands and open fields

in a 500 foot strip along the freeway, slumped

beside broken buildings,

piles of projects,

products of some god’s idea

of a joke

or of a tentative mercy –

house the poor, but don’t keep them safe or happy…



And the poverty and the crime

are hidden from the night

in daytime, a deluge of light

just past a week of bad rain

and overgrown anxieties

and domestic pain