LOST—OR FOUND—IN QUEENS

An urgent search
a plane to catch
a Ford to dump
we’re out of time
the map’s no help.
Semis blare
neon blinks
tailpipes belch
tempers burst
words burn
planes ascend with purposeful, on-time roars
but the missing rental car lot refuses to appear.
.
We turn a new corner, perhaps the right one,
and face a wonder in all the grime and roar.
At the edge of the cracked sidewalk,
between a metal warehouse for tires
and a glaring McDonald’s—
a low wood fence and an arch of roses,
real ones, live, red, blooming, and behind them,
a small house, pale blue paint immaculate,
windows sheered in white over planter boxes spilling out
elegant evidence of a gardener’s art.
.
Anomaly, incongruity, impossibility
but there it stands, no mirage.
By all the rules they should be gone,
the gardener and the curtain maker,
gone in despair to public housing,
the noise, the thieves, the stench, too much to bear,
their perfect pale blue house
bulldozed in seconds for a Taco Bell.
.
But they have not gone.
They have sewn and painted and dug and planted,
cooked and talked and called the kids.
They have gone on, here,
here where the bleating traffic
traps two astonished travelers outside a gallant arch,
witnessing one improbable patch of life and grace
refusing to succumb.