The Vertical Alignment
Multi-Media Album
Team Signposts In the Studio OIAD Sessions Our Lowcountry Skybridge I Heart NY
Oklahoma Highway Journey to Tanasi
I Heart NY
with love to the incomparable City of New York
a poetic photo essay by Peter J
On Staten Island Ferry no shadow falls today
Gulls care not of rising costs as they see her on her way
Wide-eyed camera tourists and sleepy local folk
Sit upon her spacious decks and laugh and talk and joke
On the foredeck by the water people smiling in the sun
To sail New York Harbor is free for everyone
The boat draws close to harbor signpost
Lady Liberty
Unseeing eyes see through disguise
Proclaim land of the free
The torch of freedom burning bright
Washes distant shore
And still the poor and huddled masses
Transcend the metaphor
Manhattan close enough to touch
Buildings built of legend, steel and time
Trying not to think too much
of missing pieces
and holes in the skyline
Shadow self of former glory
Globe once reigned in Tower's plaza
Rescued from oblivion she stands
Eternal flame remembers
In Battery Park
In the Canyon of Heroes history is a rich broth
Recipe traced on sidewalk plaques
Filled with moments of supreme victory
Celebrations of the times that we won
Ticker tape of a distant generation
Still drifting through Broadway
Trinity Church in Tower's shadow
Escaped without a single scar
And still the mighty organ swirls out surround praises
To the Most High God who watched over one old building
on a terrible day
At the crossroads of destiny the Towers fell
The lesson written in the signposts of Manhattan
The church rushes away from liberty
While God stands behind and waits
Blessed Trinity
Repentance is just a turn around
Beneath the earth the silent watch
Hoping to extract meaning from chaos
The thousands lie without a grave
Mourned still
Only resurrection will transcend this pit
The Slurry Wall held back the Hudson
Manhattan never suffered a New Orleans fate
Terror struck high but could not strike deep
From destruction a symbol of hope
From the scene of a crime
The signpost of remedy
At the foot of the Cross
We will find the way back home
Like the heart of New York
One building stands shrouded in sorrow
Still pierced to the core with grief
Carrying the weight of a day of terror
But the City never sleeps
and the rhythm of life is not quenched
and daytime overwhelms
a great and terrible hole in the ground
While on Staten Island silent sentinel stands
Attention ever pointed to a terrible place
in time and space
Bearing in its body
the wounds of the whole island
Friends forever remembered
Salute an untimely grave
As nighttime swallows the City
all images & verse © 2005 Pete Jorgensen
I had the privilege of seeing New York not as a strange new place I was visiting but as an old and very dear friend. Eternal thanks to Eddie Jerlin for the homeboy insider tour of the wonders of South Manhattan. I love New York!
Toured on Saturday October 15, 2005. New York had just suffered through eight straight days of torrential rains that left Ground Zero flooded and the subway trains to Uptown closed. Eddie informed that the clear warm weather that we experienced that day was very like the weather on 9/11.
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