Greenway Terrace                by Christopher Gray

Bury me in front of The Dime Store
Make me a cross of its creaking floorboards
Stud it with tootsie rolls, squirtguns and small change
Set off a salute of roll caps - bang! - with a hammer.

Dig my grave in the middle block of Greenway Terrace
In the pool of street-light where we played summer games
Outline my body with cicada shells
Let the crickets chirp my lullaby.

Set my stone high over Manhattan's East River
The little pocket park at the foot of East 58th
Rig up a mirror so I'm eye to eye
With the wheelhouses of those vast freighters gliding by.

Built me a pyre of dusty papers
From the Buildings Department or the old archives
Seal up my coffin behind a row of files
That no one will pull for a thousand years.

Bury me where I'll never see
Another person I ever knew
Don't bother writing down the location or time
I never stay in a single place.

(Christopher Gray, who writes a history column for The New York Times,
attended The Border Star and Pem-Day Schools before he moved to New York in
September of 1959.)