The Winter Of '83 Poem by Laurence Overmire

Imagine a morning in February
Walking out of the subway
Onto an urban landscape
Of new-fallen snow
Almost two feet deep

No traffic
No people
No sound

This couldn't be New York City
Near Times Square?

Was I dead and gone to heaven?

Or was this some Twilight Zone
Serling forgot to mention?

The bright morning sun
Lighting up the wide white way
Of what I knew to be a street in
More troublesome times
Skyscrapers on either side
Traffic lights blinking aimlessly

The beauty of that surreal
Pristine moment
Lingers reassuringly
Absolute peace in a place
That had probably never seen it
Before

A real place, now
If only in a dream
A place I can return to
When all this confusion
Piles up in drifts of abstract
Human consciousness

Without making a shovelful of sense.

~ Laurence Overmire