THE STRAUSES RETURN TO BROADWAY
2012 String Poet Prize Second Place
You look cold, Memory.
Frost on bronze your fleshy arms
made hard by first snow.
Bare maples, ginkgos gaze
stiff behind you, their trunks in ivy sleeves
so thin, God knows they freeze.
~ Loving… frigid water streaming from their hair —
old pair who sailed with the Titanic, seaweed
received them, limbs entwined —
Never has death been lovelier.
Winter brings violet dusk & gold.
You’ve been thinking something, here…since 1915,
your dreaming feet your gown in chilly folds.
Above your bowed head, Love’s branches quiver
as if summer — hidden silver — spoke.
Note: Straus Park — a small triangle of land where West End Avenue and Broadway intersect at 106th Street — is dedicated to the memory of Isador and Ida Straus who refused to be parted as the Titanic descended into the icy Atlantic, April 14, 1912.