76.

On an outcrop in Central Park, we talk

About leaves and geological time,

Consider the slant of sun on the green,

The lives of friends, their days by the Charles

Gone, while mothers push strollers amid spring

Sunbathers. The complexity of brick, stone, glass —

So many lives on this long slender finger

Between two rivers — drives us to science

And fiction, to putative lines between

Geology and poetry, the world and flesh

That the vendors ignore. We imagine space

Without books, the expanse of readers

Without a taste for paper. Nothing is binding

And we must part, you to your lab, I to my art.