2. New York, 1987 

It rained every day.
It hadn't for some time, she said,
until I entered the city,
a rain man. . .  .

At the end of the history of rain
we are looking at your Sunday Morning,
the driest site in town,
without the luxury of late coffee.
Precious and dull,
it's still better than Sunday afternoons
when I used to think I might as well die,
musing on the next, that is, last
millennium and
letting Satie's slow Gnossienne
premeate my spine.

I certainly admire the way
the barber pole is slightly tilted
as if it has to be,
and on the left a hydrant
that looks like a raccoon.
Then I sometimes wonder
why the four nighthawks
could have been seen
on the far right.