for Noel Black

This mountain
its talk
always reminds me
like pop songs
until I sleep again
I call us by
the names our sparrows use
scraping lunch from the grill
of a blue truck I remember
how it always diminished to YO
sustenance is everywhere made plain
where the mountains look down
my friend the engraver
says mountains are paper
one less sparrow
one more sky
as risk
knits Bed
Stuy to nose
down Nostrand Ave.
one more bloody rose
thanking my friend’s arm
whose family fled a pestilence
one less poet in Brooklyn
which sways drunken and sullen today
a pestilence they call the young
and they are not wrong
I find my face 
looking better in restaurants
from the outside
like Clapton’s cover
of “Crossroads”
the young
are always rich
the mountains always
remind me of stupidity
but a single mountain
is our true intellectual friend