Happy Birthday

I stand on legs of Gothic stone,
Woven in iron and old breath,
Straddling the dark pull of the East River.
Beneath my wooden ribs, 
Footsteps hammer the planks
Thousands of them, leaning into the salt wind, climbing toward the spine of the night.

Tonight, America turns twelve-score and ten.
I have lived through more than half of those years,
a steel harp humming with the weight of generations,
now watching the whole harbor catch fire.

From Brooklyn to the Manhattan shore,
the sky tears open in chrysanthemums of copper and blue.
The booms roll through my cables like a heartbeat,
vibrating in every granite block, every rusted bolt,
while sparks drift down like dying stars onto the black water where tall ships once dropped their anchors.

People lean against my iron rails,
shoulders touching, faces washed in sudden neon gold,
breathing in the sulfur and the summer mist.
For a moment, the friction of the city hushes into one long, steady note
The sound of an unfinished country, suspended between water and stars, still walking forward.