PEOPLE WATCHING NEAR PENN STATION (OR, AGAINST BASHO) by Dan O’Connell

among moon gazers

            at the ancient temple grounds

            not a single beautiful face 

- Basho

Got a window seat at Houndstooth Tavern, 

ordered fish and chips and a bottle 

of white wine, then a bottle of red,

and watched humanity pass by

until I could not take it anymore – 

that sweet infant tucked in light blue blankets, 

the beaten-up stroller he’s steered in

over cracked concrete like choppy waves 

amid doctors and the destitute and all others

going about their day’s destined business,

smiling back at his mother’s face,

that one face in a sea of city faces

that neither the baby nor I could see

behind her winter scarf – 

that beautiful face

Dan O’Connell is a four-time award winning poet, and multiple finalist and honorable mention. His poems have appeared over eighty seventy times, including in Mississippi Review, America Magazine, Assisi, Prometheus Dreaming, and Ghost Town Literary Magazine. A former Philosophy professor, Dan is an eviction defense attorney. He is the author of two full-length collections of poetry, Different Coasts, and Theory of Salvation, and the chapbook State of the Union. Find Dan O. at www.danoconnellpoetry.com