It's not fashionable to love this city. Not in winter.
New York you love, or you dream of Miami and LA;
Here you languish in roadside snow,
Resentfully bundled against the sharpness of the air.
Well.
I was a toddler here, in a little house on Vick Park A,
Before we moved to a quiet suburb to escape the bad schools,
The crime rate,
The busy street. And although my vowels never learned
The local flatness - in spite of the fact that
I have never seen a garbage plate - I am a son
Of these cold buildings and salt-veiled streets.
I have fallen in snowdrifts at Mount Hope Cemetery,
Clutching a camera spun with Kodak film,
On my way to photograph Susan B. Anthony's
Flag-spiked grave, and twice
I've donned glitter and white sweatpants
And glitter
To sing as a snowflake
In the Eastman School of Music's Nutcracker Ballet.
It's not love I feel for Rochester, nor shame,
But a kind of fierceness - even in January -
An unexpected loyalty or faith.
