what anyone ever needs

It's impossible for me to sort out New York right now.

It was exactly the sort of travel I needed, the type that anyone ever needs: prefaced with a tour of one city and ending in another; sleeping on the floor of an old, old friend's place and seeing familiar decor in new spaces; eating something called an Italian cheeseburger; wandering a city, running up and down flights of stairs; writing new poems curled in white rooms; hurtling under a river in a silver car filled with strangers; wet rocks in gray drizzle; shop after shop crammed with bright things I didn't even know I wanted to buy. And of course--reading poems in a tiny red room, standing-room only, and being told by total strangers that they really liked the poems, that they want to buy your book.

My book. Proofs this month, they tell me.

I saw people I haven't seen in forever, and perhaps my favorite moment was after, on a nearly-raining Saturday night, sitting in a little place in the city and drinking a slow beer among faces that I have not seen in seven-six-five years. And the realization that for all the time that has passed, things are okay. Or they will be.

Oh, hell. Look at some photos and we'll talk soon. Maybe I'll throw a New York poem up here in a few days.

Be well.