Lives I watch 

from this twenty-second story 

are yoga mats on adjacent rooftops, 

sprawled, sweat-drenched and pollen-dusted

8 AM Thursday flow

to a playlist of Brooklyn traffic—

her body elastic, a figurine from where I peer, 

stretching into a workday morning 

a bridge, 

a salutation. 

 

From this twenty-second story, 

limbs rush 

to catch trains to downtown

or friends a block down 

or rush for the rushing,

this New York thrill, 

these high-gear streets. 

Bodies and buses 

rev to match a city’s pace—

kinetic energy from underground trains 

quake the pavement, 

spur the wheels of a city bike 

into forward motion. 

 

I feel it in my toes, from this twenty-second story. 

 

Watching lives in the way 

morning dew glistens on concrete,

and lives in terrace gardens, plastic grass, 

lives in bulldozers, 

lives in upward dogs and dogs on leashes, 

panting in pace

with their master’s jogs, 

 

lives in the buildings at eye-level 

clandestine behind fog. 

 

A girl on the twenty-something floor

peers out of her bedroom window, 

imagining through the clouds, 

thinking of me.