"The Steeple" [by Amy Leigh Cutler]

Leaving, holding a cup of coffee

I can hear the the garden on 10th street singing

across from the church where men climb past the steeple toward a clock.

Goodbye New York.  Goodbye FDR and the West End.

Goodbye Soho jewelry tables, goodbye ostrich eggs the farmer brings

from Jersey.  Leaving you, I drink a cup of coffee

in a small room by the sea where I will sit and not talk,

where, for the next ten years, no telephone will ring.

Across from the church men climb past the steeple toward a clock

whose tick counts off the names of my friends

whose faces are stars on the city map constellating

the streets I am leaving. Oh, to hold a cup of coffee again.

No, to set the cup down and collect fossils and rocks.

To set those treasures down, to be quiet and listen.  

Across from where men climb past the steeple toward a clock

on blue scaffolding, I stand at this door and knock.

If it opens, where will I go?  If I go, what should I bring?

Will I leave these streets, leave the cups of coffee behind,

across from the church where men climb past the steeple toward a clock?

-- Amy Leiugh Cutler

-Amy Leigh Cutler