Vol 1 No 1 2007
The Gates
Central Park, Valentine’s Day
Dusk: we enter from Harlem, the AltaGracía Deli a
beacon
near 116th and Fifth. Airplanes tear scraps of heaven from clouds—
blue chalk, aquamarine, lighter blue. Red and yellow security lights
flash up and down the hill. Later, we’ll feed each other slippery
mussels
fresh from the market. We stroll with other couples framed in saffron;
holding your hand, dark silhouettes of trees emerge against an almost night
sky.
So cold, we move from Meer to North Meadow, the wind picks up and The Gates
are nightshirts saturated with love, Buddhist robes, blooms on the line,
live
haiku by the thousands: lucky poems incorporated into the landscape, this
moment.
Tall buildings across the meadow sport orange skirts, light arrives
in antique lamp posts, illuminating these flags while a helicopter swoons.
Taking in everything at once, for once, in the path of this silver-white
moon. Skirts and shower curtains, trash bags, laundry, hot coals
from ancient fires, flags sent as hopeful messages. The Gates look forward
and wave back—quiet looms as red hands flash danger in the crosswalks,
the way things settle in and go unnoticed. Refracted saffron permeates
evening over the ice of the Meer like a giant school of overfed Koi
swimming through February’s snow and mud, the Fauve orange
from paintings I saw so long ago—at the Metropolitan, in pictures
of distant villages with calm water and empty boats.
Look how far they’ve come to greet us, to say: you are part of the landscape, too.
Yvonne Murphy