Walking not Reading

[&]

She is not a reader but a walker.
I am paranoid.

Both are in the city
          outside of shops, offices, cafes
                    (avenue of americas)
                              --sidewalking---
                    (nyc, usa.)

She confessed having to look up to see the sky.
All those buildings perpindicular to the street, pointing up and
looked, then, to me, interpreting:
          means [you] can look up and see the sky.

                    Pointing—Smiling—Blinking

[She] needs to see the sky to look up.

Unfortunately, she added,
"You look down not to see the sky."

[&]

Battery Park.
          The same guys,
I swear it, the same guys,
selling junk and t-shirts
and the statue of liberty           closed.

Is it?
          Still?
In November           right after?

          sulfurous knocking heated metals
          sour stomach flash bulbs smell
          shrines and tourists. For once,
          nobody [selling] anything.

[&]

City Hall       more distant than ever,
          always has been. Not in Denver.
My memories of that part of town—
          with my grampy,
            when I was small—
hold no City Hall.

Was it there, then?
Is it really there, now?

What will a memorial reflect--A Bull or A Building?
All of it plastic without the debris and death.

[&]

She said "be still" but I only hear “still,”
          not to be: more with than for or to.
In that case—steel,
and all the other words that sound
similarly and not one syllable,
          not one phoneme, ironic.

Not           in spite of history
but of           sentimentality.