Sometimes, I hear your voice
when I'm walking, the sun setting
over the rooftops of Manhattan,
and the wind muttering

I remember one late afternoon
in early autumn
some fifteen years ago
at Tom's apartment on E. 9th Street
when you, high on heroin, said
there were children in the trees
as you tilted your head back
looking out the window

You were the only one
who saw those children,
but we all laughed
and I thought:
what a great line for a poem

it only took fifteen years
to get here (into this poem)

Now and then
you whisper a line or two to me
from a bearded cypress tree.

© copyright 1996 Elio Schneeman