Specimen Days

I wish I could buy you the painting on the wall

with the marshmallow clouds that hang over our city

in the pastel palette of the hour before nightfall.

Perhaps its familiar towers could speak in the 

moments that my heart seems to stall,

its cerulean trees could share memories 

only the buildings on our streets could recall.

Or maybe it would remain quiet and say

nothing at all, of our friendship or the 

years that we have spent together with 

our shadows shrinking small.

But I thought of you in the streetlamp

its yellow pigments climbing hopeful 

over the neighborhood’s evening drawl.

And I saw you in the light refracted

on the windows of the skyscrapers

standing lonesome and tall.

I wanted to find a way to thank you—

for making this place, the home that I call.