Looking for Gods in Greenwich Village

i remember meeting you several times that week
east tenth street and fourth avenue
your wave from against a wall
your voice asking for spare change
the flood of new yorkness new to me
as the colors of your clothing     the colors of night
black and blue grey     charcoal
brown and an obfuscation of dust
that changed to its native form only
in nocturnal alleys a step from the realm
of streetlights and illumination

you were new york to me
new york beyond wealth and the glisten of rain
beyond museums concerts and organized noise
beyond what i understood as literature

you were bumming too
more deeply into your life than i was into mine
but in the same way our steps
trod between definitions
like those of centaurs on urban concrete

so this is how it probably is
to meet gods     the clarity of their form
their ambiguity without name or intersection
whole streets going back to before they were even
indian paths     and you know their stories even though
you’d never seen them then     
never having really been there
as we looked at each other as a deer looks at a squirrel
each not thinking to imagine the other one
to be a mountain lion
or potentially one of the gods

from Yew Nork (2014)