(For Anne Taylor)

Pier of this balcony, white breaths blowing

& they are life's sheer cloth for days of sharpest air,

for morning organ grinders & nights of sheer jazz...

I arrived here as hunger, a cri de coeur & had no idea.

I arrived here glass-lean with interior gardens

ready to reflect, be this oxygen, these streets,

a city climber at Montparnasse, & haunted already

by spires I'd never seen.

The market stalls, the vendors shouts gave birth to awakening,

what the glowing fruit balls, the blazing colors sang-----

taste life, breathe.

One bite & launch happened.  One step meant soaring,

with ages roaring through, with all of time a flow

suddenly unlocked from paint, the masters' strokes,

the griffins' watching, the courtyards of statues.

Blooming meant every fountain & stone square

where green knew leaf & sprig root-true as food

is the art of eating.

Flight could happen only from being so famished,

flight only the living canvas,

& we, immersed hues.

Friend, was it you or I who had the dream?

You or I who keeps sailing sustained & nourished?

I still have no clue, though must open all the more

to not ever be the same.