Long Path, Day 2: Palisades Farmer's Market

Two days ago
I slurped a thin sheen of grease
off a dollar slice
with a new friend
local hustler,
a Sec-8 All Star

Now it's mid-morning
Two days walk
from city limits
and the farmer's market
a couple hundred yards
from the trail
hustles smiles

It's a social occaision
my feet are propped
It's smiles and puppies
and air smelling slightly
like fresh yogurt
its tang plays free association
with my childhood
and I am as easy as my feet

Outside Sal's
J told me excitedly
he'd love to go hiking
says it eagerly
knowing he's not going
to get clowned by
a white boy from
Pennsylvania

In Palisades
a man gives me an apple
after I offer a quarter
west Africa trills softly
on his tongue
the Orchards of Conklin
have farmed Rockland
from 1712

A woman watches
at the trash can
as two white men
mistake her table as empty
and then seated
ask to join her
and she politely excuses herself.

Petals in D Minor

  White chrysanthemum

its billowing ostrich plume

     is music's flower

This Spring
is baptism by chrysanthemum

                                              The air so sweet
                                              its current plays
                                              in opacity

                                                                       Like how
                                                                       the saddest notes
                                                                       float as apparition

Nylon strings 
mingle with Jamaica rum

                                           And from the street
                                           the melody sways
                                           in the weaver's audacity

                                                                  The flowers bow
                                                                  they weep then float
                                                                  their beauty is their contrition

         Over in Europe

Chrysanthemums bone white

  reserved only for the dead