Going Back

I wanted to write you a poem tonight,
but all I could think of
was our two nights in the city last week
and how perfect it was
to eat again at Trailer Park
with its flotilla of votive candles in the window
close enough to set our coats on fire
and cupcakes at Billy’s afterwards,
to sleep in the cramped little guest house
next to the toilet with its extended roaring flush,
and later gaze at Madame X and her delinquent strap
and Washington stuck in the Delaware forever.
Mummies, jackals, Buddhas,
and the long stalled ride back
with a Sikh cab driver as guide.
I love going back.
I think, in a way, going back
is the subway to love.
Easy, noisy, and very close.

Credit

About this Poem

“We live in the mountains with a dog, and we love it. Now and then, though, we have to go down to ‘the city,’ as New Yorkers call it, and, as my beloved describes it, ‘get some city all over us.’ We prefer the low-budget version: Chelsea not far from the High Line, walking up to Bryant Park, taking the subway to the eighties, the occasional cab. The new can be exciting, but one loves to go back, in this case, to see the jackals at the Met, eat tacos at Trailer Park [Lounge], or wonder what it is that John Singer Sargent is telling us about wealth.”
—Roger Mitchell

Author

Roger Mitchell

Roger Mitchell is the author of thirteen books of poetry, including As Water Moves (2023) and Reason’s Dream (2018), both from Dos Madres Press. His new and selected poems, Lemon Peeled the Moment Before (Ausable Press, 2008), was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and received the Adirondack Center for Writing’s 2009 People’s Choice Award. An emeritus professor of English at the University of Indiana, Mitchell lives in Jay, New York.

Date Published

12/25/2025