Smoking On The Fire Escape Poem by michael hogan

Steel rungs beneath our feet
suspended above the lights below
we smoke cigarettes in the dark.
I think of Bronx tenements
and shirt-sleeved laborers from the docks
of Ralph Kramden in his bus driver's cap
bickering with Alice all the days of their honeymoon.

The first time I ran away from home
I went to an abandoned water tower
to the south of town and climbed
its perilous ladder to the top.

No one found me there; I could still be there today
but the same force that sent me up
showed me other worlds beyond the roofs of town
and while I come back now and again
I never have been down.