It is the beautiful lie

that makes us believe that Central Park

lays empty, photographed at four

in the morning and any sign

of lingering, full of early morning dew humanity

photo-shopped out,

leaving only the light green grass and the sound of silence

in a city of broken and disturbed dreams,

the snore and the wide awake call

of the alarms and the beautiful

that reside on avenues and in sewers;

for tourism depends fully on the calculated

and erasable lie.