I’m from New York City
where I never had the chance
to move here
and not write
love poems
for two years,
where optimism was a form of radicalism
so strong
I didn’t know I was hopeful.

Fast pace so how it was
I didn’t know how to appreciate slow.

Speed so sure
I forget how to bring it
find myself a routine of who knows why
trying to do what’s right every moment
appreciating almost nothing complete.

This girl,
this young student of mine
who should have been
could have been
I’m trying to see how she could still be
the wholest human I ever met.

Eleven going on
thirty three, maybe more
come eighth grade,
her best friend’s pregnant
she didn’t get in to Stuyvesant,
writes me a letter of unmerited awe,
“You’ve been able to learn and teach so much
and you’re not even a quarter of a century yet.”

She looked at me and thought
you made it.

How innocent the unknowns
what I was made of
the grace filled tables
of multi-parental love
(divorce the latest greatest excuse we have
for more advantageous help on hand).

Make it?
Make it would mean
the still satisfaction
of every molecule moving
in this magnificent city
on the same plane of appreciation
for what it takes to make it
from wherever you came.

You’re why I make it in everyday
you’re what making it means to me
you’ll make it yet, I believe.