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Last Night

8/14/2020

Last night I swam in a pool in the middle of New York City.
I walked down the stairs of a factory building in TriBeCa
And stepped into a bright blue Roman bath for ninety minutes of bliss.
Walking back to my house I stopped for a watermelon salad at an outdoor cafe
With a big black clock and a pianist in front of a hotel that seemed stuck in time.
On my way back through SoHo to the Village,
I saw West Broadway filled with lights and the happy noise of people eating and laughing
Then I looked around and -- just like that --
I saw the giant Freedom Tower sparkling behind me --
A beacon of hope of a city resurrected after 9/11 --
But, it wasn’t until I hit Houston Street
That I suddenly realized that the shop windows
That were smashed in the riots only two months ago
Had been replaced and that those boarded up storefronts were open for business again.
That’s New York,
I thought to myself as I rounded the corner onto Washington Place,
An endless cycle of birth and destruction,
A city that burns and rises from the ashes
The city that I call home.

Rosalind Resnick
Aug. 13, 2020

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Distance

8/6/2020

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The distance from my heart to yours
Seems so small that they seem to beat as one
And yet the ocean that divides us seems so large as to engulf eternity.
The last time that I felt your touch and kissed your lips
We were standing on the platform in Florence saying goodbye
But only until we could meet again so very, very soon.
Neither one of us saw the darkness coming,
The shadow that would veil the world in death and fear
And leave us stranded on our separate shores alone.
All I know is that, if we are ever fortunate enough to meet again --
In this world or the next --
I will kiss your face a thousand times,
I will grab you and hold you tightly to my breast
And our hearts, now locked together, will forever beat as one.

Rosalind Resnick
Aug. 6, 2020

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High Line

7/19/2020

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Last night I ran out of my house for a glimpse of life and beauty.
Leases signed, my last two apartments rented,
I sprinted down West 4th Street as fast as I could go.
The High Line, that once desolate stretch of abandoned railroad track
Turned city park in all its leafy finery,
Had once again reopened and there I was,
Timed ticket in hand,
Ready to get scanned and temperature checked,
Out of breath from jogging up the stairs in a suffocating mask,
With only thirty minutes to follow the yellow dots in the middle of a boardwalk surrounded by wildy swaying trees and grasses,
To snap a photo of the sunset glowing orange through clouds floating over the Hudson,
To gaze at empty offices and apartments on either side and wonder where all the people went,
To admire the majestic Hudson Yards glittering in the distance,
To marvel at the colorful murals and sculptures
And, then, to run down the steps at 23rd Street because that was as far as they would let us go.
I came to see the High Line back in March the day before the City shut it down.
I felt as if the walls of death were closing in upon me and I had to go and see it one last time.
Last night, I came back with a new perspective --
To gorge on life and beauty in all its riotous laughter
And to truly see the High Line for the very first time.

Rosalind Resnick
July 19, 2020

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Sunflowers

7/10/2020

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Sunflowers

This year there will be no birthday party.
Too risky, I called it off.
Hard to keep guests six feet apart in a townhouse that’s only 18 feet wide.
Do the math.
No hugs and kisses,
No singing songs around the table
Or blowing out candles on a cake.
Last year I celebrated my birthday in a villa by a pool with my boyfriend and my family,
Seventeen of us roaming the hills of Florence
Living the dolce vita.
Next year who knows?
Will the borders reopen? Will there be a vaccine?
Will I see my daughter who lives in Australia?
Will I kiss my boyfriend’s face again?
Thinking about the past makes me sad.
Dreaming about the future makes me sadder.
Yet looking out the back window at my neighbor’s flower box
Where suddenly three sunflowers have sprung to life on a third-story ledge
In a rotting flower box tangled up in electrical wire,
Their perky faces turned up toward the sun,
That is my celebration of life.

Rosalind Resnick
July 9, 2020

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Hurricane

6/29/2020

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They call me the eye of the hurricane,
The calm before the storm.
With gentle winds and balmy skies,
I offer peace to travelers who’ve journeyed from afar,
A place to drop their bags and rest their heads,
An oasis from the war,
A jug of wine, a loaf of bread and then ...
A bolt of lightning, thunderstorms,
Death, destruction and exile once more.

Rosalind Resnick
June 25, 2020

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Swipe

6/19/2020

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Today I rode the subway
For the time since the lockdown,
Pulled the bright blue Metrocard from my wallet
And swiped it gingerly through the metal reader.
Go, the machine told me, in green block letters
So I ran up the stairs just in time
To see a sign that read South Ferry 0 Minutes
And, just as I thought I’d missed my train,
The doors opened and I stepped inside.
And if it hadn’t been for the kid with the dark blue mask playing on his phone
And the yellow-suited sanitation worker
Who were there with me
In that subway car this morning,
I would have thought that it was just another dream about trying to go somewhere
But actually getting nowhere,
An endless trek through deserts and airports and ruined cities.
Yet somehow my hand remembered what my mind could not
And, with a flick of the wrist, I was home again
As if I had never been away,
As if the world had never changed,
As if there had never been a quarantine.

Rosalind Resnick
June 18, 2020

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Again

6/12/2020

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Every day begins the same way
With a jolt into consciousness
From an endless dream.
Sometimes I’m racing to the airport to catch a plane
But there are no taxis or there’s something back home that I need to get --
My iPhone, my Amex card, the green backpack that I had in college
And yet somehow I’m still at home and the flight takes off without me.
Suddenly, I’m awake.
I run downstairs for breakfast, CNN, a podcast if I can fit one in,
Then upstairs to take a shower, throw on my clothes and makeup
To start my day.
And then it’s phone calls, talking to my staff, problems to be solved, leases to be signed
Tenants to be appeased, lawyers, bankers.
Around 1 PM I make myself a turkey sandwich on rye and watch more CNN
And while I’m eating a Milano cookie
The doorbell rings --
It’s UPS, FedEx, the mailman, a friend from way back
Who somehow still has my house key.
Outside my door I hear the sounds of protests down West 4th Street because
Black Lives Matter
And the police helicopters whirring overhead to make sure things don’t get too crazy on the ground.
And at 7 PM while I’m having dinner and once again watching CNN
And eating stir fry shrimp or something I ordered online,
I hear the cheering from the windows and the clanging pots and pans to thank the nurses and the doctors who saved our lives from this pandemic.
Because it isn’t over --
However much we long to get things back to normal
And go outside again without a mask and hug our friends
And put this endless day to bed
And wake up fresh and new again.

Rosalind Resnick
June 11, 2020

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Little Tree

6/5/2020

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I never thought the little tree outside my house would leaf again.
It’s dead, I told my friend, as we walked by,
The hapless victim of a brutal New York winter.
Let’s call the City, find someone to chop it down,
Remove that dead stick from our sight.
I’m only glad I was too busy doing other things to make that call
Because now my little tree has blossomed full of leaves
And every morning greets me at my window
With the softness of its green embrace.
A lesson for us city dwellers losing patience, lacking time --
Life goes slow, meanders, finds its rhyme.

Rosalind Resnick
June 4, 2020

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That Girl

5/29/2020

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Going through old letters in a box this afternoon,
I came across a picture of my younger self on a couch with a college boyfriend.
There was something strange about seeing myself so young --
Shocking actually --
That girlish face with dewy skin,
The brown hair falling down in curls on my shoulders,
The paisley dress,
The Navajo ring on my right hand,
My high school ring on the other.
That was me, I guess,
Gazing playfully into the future.
I was 21 and still a student at Johns Hopkins,
Writing my master’s thesis in Florence, Italy,
About to embark on a career as a newspaper reporter,
Hoping to make it to The New York Times
And return to Italy one day as a foreign correspondent,
Smugly assuming that I knew everything,
Confident that some handsome guy would always be there
To catch me.
Little did I know that, by the end of that year, 1981,
I would move to New York City,
Get fired from my first reporting job for insubordination,
Have my high school ring snatched off my finger
At gunpoint on a subway platform in Brooklyn,
And live to tell the tale of a thousand and one adventures
And that New York, the city I was born in,
Would become my home
And that, after all those years, I would still be that girl.

Rosalind Resnick
May 28, 2020

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Talking About The Hair Generation

5/23/2020

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These days we all seem to be talking about our hair
As if it was the Seventies and we were back in high school starring in that musical.
Before Corona, getting your hair cut or colored, styled or permed was no big deal.
Now that the salons are closed, you’ve got to have your stylist’s private number
And beg him to make a house call which he might just do if you pay him cash.
I’ve heard tales of honorable men who’ve driven 600 miles to see a barber
And an otherwise law-abiding granny who let her stylist set up shop in her backyard.
Before Corona, getting your hair done was boring and mundane, an appointment that could be postponed or even cancelled if something better came along.
But now, Post Corona, it’s become as cool as sneaking into a speakeasy at the height of Prohibition.
Bathtub gin, anyone?
I’ve decided to protest this injustice, an infringement on my right to look forever young.
Maybe I haven’t stormed the capitol building like they did in Michigan,
But I’m fighting my own one-woman war against the new normal.
Yes, I’m letting my hair grow long and gray,
The way it would have looked if I had joined a cult or lived in the 19th Century.
Sometimes I wear my hair in a ponytail or a braid,
The way I did in junior high school.
And what will happen when the City says that the salons can finally reopen?
To steal a line from Elliot Ness of the Untouchables,
I think I’ll have a drink.
Make mine a cut and color on the rocks.

Rosalind Resnick
May 22, 2020

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Last Night

Distance

High Line

Sunflowers

Hurricane

Swipe

Again

Little Tree

That Girl

Talking About The Hair Generation

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