Coney Island

I went to Coney Island this afternoon  for the first time in three years.  I seem to get there once every few years, despite my best intentions, and my natural call towards the water.  I wish it hadn’t taken me so long, especially with all that’s at stake with development plans.   Above is a photo from the good ol’ days my first winter in New York with my friend, Emily, circa 2002, and below a poem inspired by my last visit in 2006.

Coney Island bench, 28th Birthday

for Paul Newman

Free to watch the fisherman fish.

Steeplechase Park is now called Keyspan Park,
Doesn’t sound as appealing, but they’re the ones who light the stadium,
so the change was inevitable

if art is the act of imagining the forever stilled parachute
drop, the unlit stadium lit.

This place used to be – hear it on the old man’s lips
sitting on the adjacent bench to right.  On the bench to the left
a man grows frustrated giving directions,  “No Tremont,
you know, where Paul Newman played the cop in Fort Apache the Bronx.”
Poor man is lost, has never seen the movie, and unless the actor is standing
by the intersection (25 years later) in a police uniform, the example is useless—

And all the things this poet doesn’t bother to write about (horizon, sparklers of light cracking upon the water, gulls, clear sky) of course, they’re all here too.