We had just entered NYC, maybe
off the New Jersey Turnpike.
I don’t know. There was a tunnel,
exhaust fumes, traffic noise.
Dad, proud of his new Plymouth,
tried to negotiate cross town traffic
to Long Island. Although he was born
and raised in Huntington, he had
never driven Manhattan.
A Kansan for five years now,
he drove with his arm out, signaling
manually, at times, pointing lane changes.
We stopped mid-block by a park
with a statue and a loading zone,
with pigeons and a food cart,
with a jack hammer and a thousand voices
attached and unattached to faces.
Dad asked directions from a man with a hat
with a newspaper in an unbuttoned raincoat.
From my backseat vantage,
I remember a disheveled shirt, a narrow
pencil tie, the hurried vowels
on his tongue, like one of my NY uncles
with his here’s-what-ya-gotta-do
before the bus arrives,
before the light changes, before the meteor hits.
He knew a better way, street to avenue to street,
making sure we understood the intersections,
the curve of the harbor, both the bridge
to take, and the bridge to avoid.
Dad eased his watch-my-fuckin-fender Plymouth
into traffic. Mom, like an anthropologist,
said the stranger was a perfect example
of New York attitude, of it’s no big deal,
but you gotta know this. This stop. This go.
Dad shrugged.
Mom held my belt, lifted my sister to see
the Empire State Building.
I leaned out the car window.
High above me, birds
flew between the canyon walls, nests
who knows, somewhere
between the street and the sky.
