BROOKLYN UNBOUND

From Alabama to Brooklyn I was bound,
Seeking a new life on Whitman’s holy ground.
And so today—here in the midst of a more temperate winter’s day—
I took a walk for pleasure and the glorious Gardens found.

Bye and bye, I walked beneath the Chinese Gingko trees,
And bathed in botanic garden beauty from the pond of Japanese,
Then lingered amid the garden filled with Shakespearean lines that ever-
fragrant stay.
I found lanes framing vistas of a Brooklyn—vast, and divine—and
wondrously fused,
Like winter’s silvery freeze.

I left behind a different world, one devoid of such diversity.
But here in this atoll of solitude, secreted amid the hearty, streaming flow of humanity,
Something faintly called to me—beckons now to me, and more boldly—
For I hear it say:
“Alas, you are not Brooklyn bound, but Brooklyn free!”

© Larry Garland