At its heart     the city is a quietness

lost in the mystery of its own complexity

surrounded by the coldness of 

 

the merging rivers     where a lazy

ripple slowly traverses the muddy surface

a city of cracks and crevices 

 

interstitial places where artists generate

the ink and paint that hold the streets

in place     the real city that simmers

 

beneath the boiling idiocy 

of politics and finance 

but this is not what I wanted to say

 

sometimes I get so bogged down

in abstractions     this morning 

I realized that to do yoga well 

 

you need to become water     so that

you can flow into all the small spaces

that reject the clumsiness of your body

 

and perhaps the stiffness of my muscles

my overarching inflexibility     can be

overcome     and you can pour me

 

into your shape     and drink me down

like a glass of juice    as your remember

your own rivers     and all the bridges of

your great city     and how they linked us.