June 20, 2023
Dawn on the East River Grey
I touch the window
A seventh-floor hospital room
Glass warm to my palm
The summer solstice
No blue
A clouded sky A pale white sun
93 million miles away
Glowing
Gray
The East River flows fast south
Four knots with the flush
Of Long Island Sound
Twice daily
In out in out
North South
As the estuary has flowed
Since the melting of the Great Glacier
15000 years ago
Forming Long Island and points East
Block Island, Cape Cod, Martha’s Vinyard, Nantucket.
Their original names
Manisses, Paumanok, Pawtuxet, Noepe, Nontoke.
To the Lenape tribe
The East River Pawkatuck
Their land stretched from the Nargansett to the Delaware Bay.
Lenapehoking
A land of plenty
Their Name Lenni Lenape
“We the people’ numbered 50,000
Living on oysters, beans, corn, fish, and the fruits
A land of plenty.
7:16 AM Rita delivers my breakfast
Eggs, potato fritter, sausages, black coffee
Jamaican
African
Her smile lights my life
Her thirteen year-old son
Name Michael.
Day six in the hospital
On Manhattah
The Island of Hills
Or
Manahactanienk
The Place Of Intoxication
7:46PM
Commuter Ferries sped South
Down the Pawkatuck
Fast Tugboats toil north against the tide
Driving barges north against the surge
Gulls fly freely overhead
I mistake them for helicopters
My eyesight is not 20/20
But I strip away the apartment blocks
On Roosevelt Island
To before the Dutch came to Manhattaw
Twenty years later
Only 3000 Lenape remained
In all of Lenapehoking
The Land of Plenty lost.
Their canoes once plied the East River.
Now only jet skies, the Circle Line, party boats, and sumptuous yachts
Champagne and wine drunk off Manhattah
The Place of Intoxication.
In my hospital bed
I drink black coffee
Banned from all spirits
My destiny was either sober or dead
I chose Life
My clan lived on the other side of Earth
Two Wives, five children, two grandchildren
Sri Racha, Thailand
On the Gulf of Siam
Ao Sayam
It is night in Sri Racha.
A twenty-three hour flight away.
The other side of here.
The world turns
West
Into the afternoon.
Towards the night
Same as the forever of the Great Glacier
The drowning of Atlantis
15000 years ago to now
And into eternity
And I turn with it
My hand against the hospital window
Feeling warmth of the rising sun of forever.
Over Pawkatuck
Lenapehoking
A land of plenty
