LENSED

"In the city nothing changes: It becomes cold part of the year, and hot another, but no trees lose their leaves, no crops ripen, there are only the streets, the fire escapes, the sky; the telephone, the echoing gymnasium, the angelic face of the Italian boy selling Christmas trees whom you see walking home from the Baths one cold winter night, glowing in the flames he has started in an old oil can to keep warm as he stands there on Second Avenue. Each winter you dance, and each summer you go to the beach. Each year you love someone new: Orientals in 1967, Italians in 1968, blacks in 1969, and bearded blonds in 1970; and always the Puerto Ricans, the angels, who take the form of messenger boys, waiting to cross the street across the pavement from you in their jeans and sneakers, their old leather jackets, on a cold winter day. You remember the eyes, as beautiful as bare trees against a sky; naked, cold, as they glance at you for a moment and then look away. Years pass loving such eyes. And the only way you know you're older is that you (once loved by older men) now find yourself loving boys younger than you..." from Dancer From The Dance, by Andrew Holleran