Transplant Rambling Blues

Stepping off the bus, a wild-eyed farm animal in this cosmopolitan jungle, I was immediately stabbed in the gut of my heart by the thug mugger of this city's beauty, a metaphor in case that isn't clear. Later on, under the influence of a nightclub's violent musical assault, she asked me above her cleavage if I felt at home here yet, if I felt like this city was my home. After a long pause, I told the place where she had been standing that I was terrified of becoming so numb to humanity that I did not feel overwhelmed by this place. She didn't understand, having walked away, and I was left dancing badly by myself. Sometimes, in the park, I tell the trees that I've met their distant cousins, far away in a place where trees plant people and tend to them but people often cannot survive in great numbers because the climate is more suitable for plants and wildlife. I like to imagine seeing coyotes on the horizon in this place. I like to imagine horizons. When, defeated and relieved, I get back on that bus to the real world, my greatest fear is that the people back home won't recognize me, won't let me back in. "You've changed," they'll say. "That city has ruined you." Maybe someone can take me up by Eagle Pond and fell me into a dirt grave, like we did with horses back on the farm. Meanwhile I'm on a subway and a man who smells like vomit it asking me if I trust the church. I'm pretending not to hear him, pretending not to smell him, pretending not to taste him in the roof of my mouth. I don't want him to feel despair, but I want him to disappear from my world. We want these cruelties sometimes, in a city like this. Far above this clackety train car buildings thrive in the city soil, pushing their penthouses up to drink in the sun of this new morning, people crawling all over them like bugs. "We pollinate the buildings like bees," I say, laughing, but the man is gone.