I am wandering south on the High Line.

It is a lush summer Sunday
and the path is a pulsating throng
and the air smells of
sticky sweets old fry oil humid city wind.

I pass through a section labeled “prairie”
as if a bed of black-eyed Susans
three stories above 23^rd Street
could be any less pampered
than the gardens of Versailles.

Hard to believe that this domesticated space
was once urban wilderness all
goldenrod milkweed Queen Anne’s lace.

Nature’s exuberance run riot where

carcasses in their bloody stink
had come clattering into the old
meatpacking plants tracks elevated to
reduce carnage amid the chaos below:

An endless scurry serving warehouses and wharves

hard by docks from where oystermen
set out to dredge the muck of New York Harbor
mining cheap fuel for Europe’s desperate migrants.

II

At Gansevoort I descend to Little Island.

An artifice of hills and valleys
concrete footings sunk into the riverbed
a fairytale public playground
only made possible by private money
in our neo-Gilded Age.

Below a duck dabbles amid splintered pilings
in the pea-green murk

Remains of the dark abandoned Docklands
sexual funhouse danger rubbing shoulders
with pleasure decades before Manhattan’s
bright Disneyfication.

III

I carefully navigate the cobblestones at Gansevoort and Ninth.

They’re a chic retro touch faux whimsy

The only meatpacking now: young bodies
clean, well dressed, soft handed loudly jamming the bars.