I was standing on a corner near the Guggenheim,

just me and three thousand other people

waiting to cross. A few seconds after the light changed,

a cab tore through and almost hit the woman in front of me.

The guy to my left screamed mother fucker in English,

as the woman beside him shouted something in Dutch,

and the man next to her something in Hindi, cousins,

no doubt, to the slur about the cabbie

having sex with the woman who abracadabraed his breath

into the chalice of flesh. We all looked at each other

with an expression that, in the language of the face,

translated as asshole, smiled and moved on. It's the smiling

I adore, the recognition of how alike we are

in our differences. If you want to meet the world,

come to America. People arrive with suitcases,

and without, with twenty and twenty million dollars

sewn into the lining of their chakras, by plane

and foot and boat and raft and balloon

in the past, when air ships were a thing

that made people look up and wish for a life

in the sky. It wouldn't surprise me if the cabbie

swore at us in French or Spanish, Swahili

or the Hebrew that leapt out from the deli

I stood in front of an hour later, wondering which camefirst,

the bagel or the shmear. A smorgasbord of languages.

Of hair, and noses, of songs and dreams and genes.

If you think of people as metal shavings, you're weird,

but then you can also think of America as a magnet.

People are attracted here from everywhere.

Because they're tortured. Or have restless soul syndrome.

Or believe in a god who'll get them harassed

or killed at home. Whatever our problems are,

we've been the closest thing the world has known

to an open door. Some say close it. Maybe. Sure.

But then again, as the children of light, of stars

that died and passed their reaching on to us,

we could also crack it wider.

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