To Brooklyn

Signs on the Tappan Zee Bridge remind you that life is worth living in case you have forgotten. Richie Rich lives in New Jersey not far from that bridge. Charles Darwin worked out his theory of natural selection observing eighty-eight lanes of Northbound traffic merge suddenly into four from up in the rigging of the George Washington Bridge. I park across from a public housing tower in an industrial area - shift change at a bottling plant, I think, a Polish beer. Brooklyn. Walk around the block and there is the savage guitar player I've come to see smoking a joint and listening into a cell phone. When he looks at me, I nod and give him a thumbs up. He waves. I walk by feeling twelve.