Walt Whitman waiting to board below, sun half an hour high, 
meets strangers’ eyes:  do souls shine through?  He seeks  
sweetness, honey in the roughs, waifs, and proud Manhattanese; 
chitchat, perhaps more, on his river ride from Fulton Landing. 
Hart Crane flicks a cigarette butt over the railing, 
eyeballs drunk deckhands crowding the pier, playing craps. 
Sections of his epic are wound, waiting in his typewriter upstairs. 
On his brass horned Victrola, grooves well-worn, Bolero. 

Lightheaded, west on the planks of the Bridge walk, 
I’m post-pot bloodshot.  I don’t dare seek souls!   
Wind gusts or the wake from a descending jet could sweep me 
downriver, downbay.  To stay alive, I focus on the twin towers 
fixed to the island’s edge, their sky lobbies and spire, 
slate gray shadow-sides dappled by glow from brokerages.

Martin Shapiro‘s poems have appeared in the Cold Mountain Review, Potomac Review, Delmarva Review, Lunch Ticket, Pilgrimage, Thieving Magpie, Gargoyle, The Gravity of the Thing, Phoebe, and other literary publications.  He is a retired librarian living in Maryland.