Winter Comes

I think how lovely it would be to be in Paris or Poland,
among the masters of the past, the poets of the future,

but instead, I am in New York, city of my birth, where
the tourists crowd around Macy’s as I watch a friend shop,

but depressed and broke, I do not buy a thing.  How funny
to go inside a store and walk out empty handed, like the other day,

when I strolled into the Met, picked up pretzels, bread, and milk
and put them down soon after, unwilling to lug them in my frozen hands,

without gloves. I’d only gone in to get out of the rain. 
I tell myself it is raining in Paris and possibly snowing in Krakow.

Winter comes and with it, the cabs, tourists, raindrops mass
on the sidewalks before everything, even a city, shuts off.