June 20, 2023
Dawn on the East River
The summer solstice
No blue
A clouded sky
A pale white sun
93 million miles away
Glowing
Gray
I
In bed
A fourteenth-floor hospital room
Touch the window
Glass warm to my palm
Below
The East River flows fast south
Four knots with the flush
Of Long Island Sound
Twice daily
In out in out
North South
As the estuary has flowed
Since the melting of the Great Glacier
15000 years ago
Forming Long Island and points East
Block Island, Cape Cod, Martha's Vinyard, Nantucket.
Their original names
Manisses, Paumanok, Pawtuxet, Noepe, Nontoke. The Lenape tribe called the East River Pawkatuck
Their land stretched
Nargansett to the Delaware Bay.
Lenapehoking
A land of plenty
Their Name Lenni Lenape
"We the people' numbered 50,000
Living on oysters, beans, corn, fish, and the fruits
The land of plenty
Four hundred years ago___
Now
20227:16 AM
Rita delivers my breakfast
Eggs, potato fritter, sausages, black coffee
She
Jamaican
African
Her smile lights my life
Her thirteen year-old son
Name Michael.
Day six in the hospital
On Manhattah
The Island of Hills
Or
Manahactanienk
The Place Of Intoxication
7:46PM
Commuter ferries sped South
Down the Pawkatuck
Fast
Tugboats toil north
Against the tide
Driving barges
Northbagainst the surge___
Gulls fly freely overhead
I mistake them for helicopters
My eyesight not 20/20
But my eyes strip away the apartment blocks
On Roosevelt Island
To before the Dutch came to Manhattaw___
Twenty years later
Only 3000 Lenape
In all of Lenapehoking
The Land of Plenty lost.
Their canoes once plied the East River___
Now jet skies, the Circle Line, party boats, and sumptuous yachts
Champagne and wine drunk off Manhattah
The Place of Intoxication__
This morning
I drink black coffee
hospital coffee
Bleech___
Me
Banned from all spirits
My destiny either sober or dead
I chose Life___
My clan lived on the other side of Earth
Two Wives, five children, two grandchildren
Sri Racha, Thailand
On the Gulf of Siam
Ao Sayam
Now night in Sri Racha.
A twenty-three hour flight away.
The other side of here.
The world turns
West
Into the afternoon.
Towards the night
Same as during the forever of the Great Glacier
The drowning of Atlantis
15000 years ago to now
And into eternity
And I turn with it
My hand against the window
Warm from the rising sun of forever___
Over Pawkatuck
Lenapehoking
A land of plenty
Forever here
In my heart and soul___
