Bronxland Beautiful

My nature loving
heart was born inside of this Bronxland
beauty

Cradled between whispering rivers
salty ocean and blue sky
in between sirens and starling song
Bronxstrong / wind in my bones
brick colored breeze in my blood
long searches for nature
only footsteps away
to writing poetry by the Bronx River
meditating in the silent cosmos
Woodlawn Cemetary in the spring
surrounds itself and blossoms with pink blossoms
dogwoods and cherry blossoms

You cannot paint away this beauty with stigma,
bury it in stereotypes, cloud it with Fort Apache smoke

There was that too
smoke for days and in my 1970s childhood
there was also the river where my Earth Goddess grandmother
held my hand to lead me home time after time