Clouds Over New York - James Duncan

I live here, sleep here,

carry memories of waking here,

early mornings, walking cold

floors to the bathroom to find

the window open to NYC

skylines across the East River

I lived there, slept there too,

I left there, I’ll leave here too,

carry memories like boxes

filled with human detritus

down dusty stairwells to a

truck, to a road, to a skyline

I’ll live somewhere, sleep there,

wake on bright mornings, maybe

Christmas Eve morning, see a

cloud that once danced through NYC

skylines, task it with a memory

to carry onward long after I

no longer live here, wake here,

walk the cold wooden floors here too

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James H Duncan is the author of Talavera Sunsets (Bottlecap Press), Cistern Latitudes (Roadside Press), and We Are All Terminal But This Exit Is Mine (Unknown Press), among other books of poetry and fiction. He resides in upstate New York but travels widely to write about indie bookstores for his blog, The Bookshop Hunter. For more, visit www.jameshduncan.com