I love to go downtown. I don't love driving or trying to find parking downtown, but once I'm there, I'm always glad I came. And sometimes, once I'm safely parked, I can hear Eva Gabor in my mind, exclaiming "Darlin' I love you but give me Park Avenue!"
Mark Irwin
for Gerald Stern
Everything stands wondrously multicolored
and at attention in the always Christmas air.
What scent lingers unrecognizably
between that popcorn, grilled cheese sandwiches,
malted milkballs, and parakeets? Maybe you came here
in winter to buy your daughter a hamster
and were detained by the bin
of Multicolored Thongs, four pair
for a dollar. Maybe you came here to buy
some envelopes, the light blue par avion ones
with airplanes, but caught yourself, lost,
daydreaming, saying it’s too late over the glassy
diorama of cakes and pies. Maybe you came here
to buy a lampshade, the fake crimped
kind, and suddenly you remember
your grandmother, dead
twenty years, floating through the old
house like a curtain. Maybe you’re retired,
on Social Security, and came here for the Roast
Turkey Dinner or the Liver and Onions,
or just to stare into a black circle
of coffee and to get warm. Or maybe
the big church down the street is closed
now during the day, and you’re homeless and poor,
or you’re rich, or it doesn’t matter what you are
with a little loose change jangling in your pocket,
begging to be spent, because you wandered in
and somewhere between the bin of animal crackers
and the little zoo in the back of the store
you lost something, and because you came here
not to forget, but to remember to live.
