Christo Gates
Hear an audio version of this piece
Central Park, New York City 2005
We dumb tourists get it: Let the Gates
Take us in, sell us Central Park
To celebrate our real estates
Processional in this public lark,
To flap and waver in whatever wind,
Clamber outcrops like saffron goats,
Feel the light bend warm or thinned,
Or slowly muted near the oarless boats,
And let the orange kites in us go free.
The rocks in the snow now dark as this day
Ending, still the sun-banners make me
Ache to shake a New Yorker to cry, "Damn it— PLAY!"
video and original music by Scott Fray
photography by Joe Wrobel