All Along The Bronxwood Tower

The hill slopes down from Bussing Ave to the east-
There’s no view more true than the sunset hue
shining over the tall buildings of Edenwald over yonder,
Go upstairs, look north, and you can see way beyond Yonkers,
The west has the trains and the river and the cemetery, and highways that swerve across 233rd.

Looking downtown, of course, you can see as far deep
as Manhattan, and even parts of Brooklyn and Queens,
planes landing at LaGuardia; from the Long Island Sound to parts of New Jersey, and every bridge in between.

In the city that never sleeps I grew up looking out into a dreamscape – but the real heart and soul are all the people I know
from the time I was a toddler ’til ‘today-years- old.’

We played baseball with neighborhood kids until dark,
It was a long, steep trek up East 233rd Street
but our feet would never tire
as we beat the pavement along the hum of the glide of other cars’ tires
and when we got home, ‘home’ meant the whole building,
A small town stretching toward the sky, all sharing the same high ceiling.

Our backyard was the playground on the side, we reimagined the space into a baseball diamond,
A basketball and/or dodgeball court, a football field, our collective mind was real.
Every single day in the summer was ‘We outside!!’

Family, friends and neighbors, we’ve always been the same – all intertwined;
All along the Bronxwood Tower, a vertical village with a view so grand –
A tristate panorama that makes Manhattan skyscraper perspectives look pretty damn bland.

I come back at least once a year to see my family,
a pilgrimage I make no matter where else I plan to be.
Seeing my folk from across all 12 floors, it makes me glad to have the cards that life handed me. – RSM