Garden State
Aug 19 2008


New Jersey makes me smile.
Just mention Newark, Hackensack, Hoboken,
and I can’t help myself.

It gazes over the river
at the skyline of New York,
the envious ugly sister.
Wise guys,
getting rich on contracts
for hauling garbage
who sound like Tony Soprano.
And tough guys,
who talk with their hands.
And how unlikely —
state troopers shooting bears
in suburban backyards;
sunrise over the ocean.

It entered the Union
one of 13 states
with Pennsylvania, Virginia;
but like a junior partner
— no Declaration
no landed gentry
no social graces.

If I were a State
I suspect I’d be New Jersey —
bourgeois,
middle class,
and, despite the jokes
vast tracts of untouched forest.

My own secret garden
— never that far
from the Turnpike.