How to Get There

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Turn left off Henry onto Middagh Street
 to see our famous firehouse, home
 of Engine 205 and

Hook & Ladder 118 and home also to
 the mythic painting “Fire under
 the Bridge” decorating

the corrugated sliding door. The painting
 depicts a giant American flag
 wrinkled by wind 

and dwarfing the famous Brooklyn Bridge
 as it stretches as best it can
 to get a purchase

on Manhattan. In the distance a few dismal
 towers and beyond the towers
 still another river.
 
A little deal table holds a tiny American
 flag—like the one Foreman held
 as he bowed to

receive gold at the ’68 Olympics in Mexico
 City—; this actual flag is rooted in
 a can of hothouse

roses going brown at the edges and beginning
 to shed. There’s a metal collection
 box bearing the

names of those lost during the recent burnings.
 Should you stop to shake the box—
 which is none

of your business—you’ll hear only a whisper.
 Perhaps the donations are all
 hush money,

ones, fives, tens, twenties, or more likely
 there are IOUs and the heart
 of Brooklyn

has gone cold from so much asking.
 Down the block and across
 the street, a man

sleeps on the sidewalk, an ordinary
 man, somehow utterly spent,
 he sleeps through

all the usual sounds of a Brooklyn noon.
 Beside him a dog, a terrier,
 its muzzle resting

on crossed paws, its brown eyes wide
 and intelligent. Between man
 and dog sits

a take-out coffee cup meant to receive,
 next to it a picture of Jesus—
 actually
 
a digital, color photograph of the Lord
 in his prime, robed and
 though bearded
 
impossibly young and athletic, and—
 as always—alone. “Give
 what you can,” 

says a hand-lettered cardboard sign
 to all who pass. If you stand
 there long enough

without giving or receiving the shabby,
 little terrier will close his eyes.
 If you stand

there long enough the air will thicken
 with dusk and dust and exhaust
 and finally with

a starless dark. The day will become something
 it’s never been before, something for
 which I have no name.

© Philip Levine