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American Writers on Location 
The dream, which I haven't had yet, of being
lost in a vibrant but strange city like New York
or San Francisco, not just lost myself
but with a group of people, young adults,
students I am supposedly in charge of,
scares me, even though I can talk
and even laugh about it. In one version,
that's me, asleep on a bench in Central Park,
apparently not caring what time it is
or what intriguing but nonetheless creepy
other visitors are skulking about,
they must be just outside the frame of this photograph
not likely to appear on a postcard.
Perhaps they are engaging my students in conversation
and the kids don't know any better,
they're fooled by the apparently polite patter
about the Guggenheim or MOMA or Village Vanguard
and great bookstores, before they're held up
or beaten up, or worse, and I can't protect them
or call a cop or 911, all I can say is, Hey,
I thought we were going to Harlem today,
Arthur Miller lived as an infant in Apartment 6B
at 45 West 110th Street, one of many
luxury apartment houses built in Harlem
at the turn of the century, though
of more interest to us and countless scholars
of the famed Harlem Renaissance is the brick
and brownstone house at 267 West 136th Street
where Wallace Thurman lived during the twenties,
or the Paul Lawrence Dunbar Apartments.
Wait, now I'm really lost, we're on the Lower East Side,
and Allen Ginsberg took Jack Kerouac's picture
on that fire escape. This was just before he drove
his Green Automobile to find his old companion, Neal Cassady,
in his house on the Western ocean, in that other dream.
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