From the street beneath my Brooklyn building
sitting on its somber haunches
in the shadows of late summer,
a chorus of young voices join the music
of bells jingling from an ice cream truck.
In window after window
curtains part, casements are unlatched
or ceremoniously unstuck. Women sing out
the names of their children,
tossing bundles of coins in knotted cloth.
Through canopies of laundry
they rain on cracked pavement
amidst the peal of sopranos and tenors
calling out milky and mottled flavors,
the heavy white door
of Good Humor
opens on its iron hinges
releases a scarf of cold
into the bitter August air
and the city’s gray heat diminishes--
our poverty vaporized
in a joyful clink of dimes
and nickels on warm cement.

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