“On Your Departure to California”

Prayer for you out west.
Where night falls only after mine.
The second curtain. That enigmatic dark,
and daylight so clarifying, it hurts.
Prayer for the headless deer in Saratoga
and the thirty lobster shells we buried
in a small Connecticut town.
For the elementary-school kids rushing headfirst
into the Brooklyn twilight. For the poets who came before
and saw the purple northeast, blizzard-full
but no quakes, and wanted for nothing else.
For the gold shops of Jackson Heights
and the dead soldiers in Mt. Auburn.
For the dead who just want to remain dead
and not dance into the speech of men.
For the tiny churches and their sullied bells.
For every gas station. For the tri-states.
Yes, even for Jersey’s ease. For Café Paulette,
our last meal, before the city fell.
Prayer for our Hart Crane. For our bridge.
The blue one. For your return to Prospect Park,
where I’ll be waiting, smug, dripping in city bees.
Prayer for you, queen of the wide air,
and your happy flights and scraped-up knees
and the young fields behind you.
Prayer for the sand-whipped Rockaway Beach,
where we spent a birthday and fought the wind.
You ran into the cold May ocean,
and I thought, am I going to have to go in
if she gets caught? just as you rose
from the water and waved.