Catskills

By: Marielena Gomez

I was once quickly enamored by  

the city streets

summer hued sunsets

in the most feminine warm colors

imaginable

captured by the varying skyline

the adaptability

of wildlife  

residing within its fortified

ivy tangled walls  

the rumbling of my sixth floor

relating me right back  

to the intrigue

this city lays

the rosy, orange glaze of summertime

ways always was the ruse

to forthcoming autumn days

but as I age

grow stagnant in the ever-change

my eyes seek out

less malaise

this city surmounted

decades of maintaining

how to be hard

my heart eased with love

clean air

the ineffable existence

of being there

compared to the dark matter  

and form      

the presence of growth  

outside of its core

an agricultural suburb

Thoreau describes as truth

to “suck out all the marrow of life...

to live deliberately, to front

only the essential facts of life...

I went to the woods...”

and in these woods alone

love discovered life,

in these woods

I discovered freedom

in (t)his love

life was born

the city a pawn

in a gambit

the streets now

folding in their hand

the haze of the skyline fades

and I’ve paid the ways of a day

rushing to the return

now that the wilderness is home