Brooklyn Heights Blog

A breeze batters branches;
the honey locust whispers,
¡Esperanza, esperanza!
On the harbor, tugs flit
on fathomless errands,
and beyond, the dentate skyline
no longer bears the memory
of Yamasaki’s towers, their image now
recumbent in brass at my feet.
A squirrel, brazen, fixes me
with blank eyes while lithe young women,
buttocks bobbing in tandem,
do pushups against a park bench.
Toddlers screech and stumble,
as nannies share news in lilting
island accents. The sun arches
on its marathon course as I turn
toward home. A gust rattles
the gingko: “It’s all downhill from here.”

Claude Scales
First published in Self-Absorbed Boomer, June 21, 2007.

Hm . . . Memorable . . . what? (He peers closer.) Equinox, memorable equinox. (He raises his head, stares blankly front. Puzzled.) Memorable equinox? . . . (Pause. He shrugs his head shoulders, peers again at ledger, reads.) Farewell to–(he turns the page)–love.
– Samuel Beckett, Krapp’s Last Tape

In Florida, autumn came
as a change in the light
in late afternoon,
around mid-October.
I hardly noticed it
until I was nineteen.
A girlfriend left me.
I wrote a poem, ephemeral
as the love it mourned.

At sixty, autumn seems
like that last song
sung by Dave Guard’s Trio
(later covered by Sinatra):
vintage wine, days decreasing.

And now, in Brooklyn
(I’ve lived life backwards:
Florida, Manhattan, Brooklyn),
an older voice whispers
gently, to my gentile ears,
L’shanah tovah.

Claude Scales
(First published in Self-Absorbed Boomer, September 26. 2006.)