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Mary Jo Salter
Cities in the Sky

for James Rossant

The buildings you drew were stooped
a little like you, lanky and tall and shambling
in your cloud-colored sweater, smiling vaguely
but curiously through your chic, black-rimmed,
perfectly round glasses.

Good morning. Yes thanks, coffee.
Show me your latest cities.
Or in any case, cities I can’t keep straight.
They hunch and huddle in my head—
the toy building-block houses,
blank-faced and pink and red,
that fall willingly from some cliff you invented

but do not fall; they stall.
They stay there, falling; even you don’t know why.
We drink more coffee in Claverack,
New York, on a day of arctic cold
and I inspect another high
cloud packed like an attic

with a city, clover-leafed with ramps
of cheerful, commuting cars, wherever
cars commute up to there,
a cloud that hovers like the dream
of the cows below,
unaware they’re dreaming:
they’re realists in their watercolor,
browsing, heads down, on a meadow
of saturated green.

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