Big Apple Scruffs

I shall endeavor to tell you this story
accurately and with sides of aplomb.
Even though I am no longer the tourist,
eyeing the city of New York sans calm.

Now I’m at home with my travel keepsakes
recalling sites of Big Apple extant.
My wife and I were two scruffs* for it all;
New York can certainly charm and enchant.

And when I say scruffs I mean were fans
of the Big Apple and all it bestowed.
We remain mid-western suburban folk,
not like the Beatles’ fans of Abbey Road.

So on a jet from the airport we left,
flying so high above city and field.
Squares and rectangles of land are unique;
that is how life on the Earth is revealed.

Thus at LaGuardia we arrived safe
and I was glad to stretch my lower half.
There we were, two countenances aglow
giving thanks on our way to the Giraffe.

What a hotel with amazing decor!
Beds like square polar bears with a red stripe.
It’s safe to say it took our breath away;
perhaps it was part of Big Apple hype.

O Peter Stuyvesant², what you began!
Back in those days of colonial lore.
Would you have thought New York could grow to be
a great Big Apple the world would adore?

As scruffs, we made sure to prioritize
our core agenda for time limit sake.
Because New York has a way to unfold
even at night when you lie there awake.

There was Miss Liberty, there was Wall Street,
Radio City, that grand music hall.
There was Ground Zero and the Brooklyn Bridge,
everywhere we felt the heart of it all.

How I remember the sights and the sounds
proper to Big Apple, always to keep.
Even now I can hear the subway train,
clacking its wheels as I drift off to sleep.


40 Lines
Writer’s Cramp
9-28-16
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*The Apple Scruffs were a loosely-knit group of hardcore Beatles fans who were known
for congregating outside the Apple Corps building and at the gates of Abbey Road Studios
in London during the waning days of Beatlemania, in the hope of seeing or interacting with
one of the band members.

² Peter Stuyvesant (c. 1612 — August 1672), known as Peter, served as the last Dutch
Director-General of the colony of New Netherland from 1647 until it was ceded provisionally
to the English in 1664, after which it was renamed New York. He was a major figure in the
early history of New York City.