{"id":2631,"date":"2026-09-07T14:18:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-07T14:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/?p=2631"},"modified":"2026-09-13T16:03:07","modified_gmt":"2026-09-13T16:03:07","slug":"schmear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/?p=2631","title":{"rendered":"Schmear"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
We\u2019re out on the streets 
before The City wakes.
She\u2019s a different animal 
before nine in the morning
on a holiday Monday.

\"\"

With the pavement to ourselves
We power walk at our own pace
Unencumbered by roller bag-dragging newbs
with slack mouths and bobble heads, 
visually ingesting the skyscraper surrounds 
like the hatchling-fresh, hungry babes they are.

Please<\/em>. 
Save us from the tourists;
After four days, 
we\u2019re clearly NYC locals now.

We set our course for a bagel shop 
twenty blocks across town.
We trek through Times Square 
and Fifth Avenue, past Arc\u2019Teryx 
and Cartier.

She won\u2019t hold my hand, 
but her cadence matches mine.
It\u2019s as close as I\u2019ll get to 
an acknowledgment of kinship, 
perhaps.
It\u2019s enough, for now.

Our white Nike trainers strike 
loose, shed pigeon feathers 
and we dodge blue refuse bags 
slammed to the curb by weary first shift workers
as if four tandem rowers 
deftly clearing boulders in the river.
We ford The Avenue of the Americas.
Undaunted, we pass Madison 
and clear Lexington.

I regret not grabbing a to-go drip coffee from the lobby; 
I urge her to slow; we pop into Blank Street Coffee.
\u201cMy friends from camp say this is the best caf\u00e9!\u201d 
She beams.
She orders a \"cinnamon bun latte on ice\"; 
(hold the \"thanks!\")
I ask for a \"Daydream with whole milk, large, please.\"
(Tip alone costs more than a McCaf\u00e9 latte)

\"\"

We resume our stroll 
(I reactivate my Peloton Outdoor Walk tracker)
We meet up with her Dad, my husband,
And he holds the bagelry front door open for us.

We walk in and now we\u2019re the ones 
with sesame bagel-sized irises, 
agog at the plethora of choices 
deficient in glutens.
\u201cI don\u2019t know what to get!\u201d 
Our daughter cries in earnest angst.
The city native behind us sizes us up 
and sighs.
We won\u2019t be a swift order. 
How fast the bagel rolls.

He gets an avo with egg on everything;
She decides on a toasted carrot cake bagel \"with plain.\"
I go for broke with the: 
\"Rivington on everything, sub chive in lieu of regular.\"

We collect our warm treasures 
and cross another street 
to sit on a granite ledge in the sun. 

\"\"

Pigeons whoosh about us 
as we each take the perfect bite.
In a New York Minute we\u2019re transported
to a place where nostalgia and our future 
meld together like schmear on a hot bagel.
<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cSchmear,\u201d about a long walk for a bagel with a mom, a daughter, and free reign of the city, written Monday, September 07, 2026 poem 250 in a series of 365 poems written by Diana Ludwick in 2026. Photo: “Bagel, Lox and Schmear, To-Go,”  by Diana Ludwick \u00a9 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2725,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,2126,262,2130,2358,311,200,1572,2,2129,2353],"tags":[2791,2799,2111,2795,2494,2802,2790,651,2633,2620,2797,1847,2798,1154,56,2803,2793,2801,1108,2796,2800,2792,2608,2621,2788,1287,134,2794,2789,692],"class_list":["post-2631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2026-poetry-challenge","category-culinary","category-dry-humor","category-eating-and-drinking","category-food-tourism","category-generational","category-humor","category-of-place","category-poems","category-recipes-for-life","category-travel","tag-arcteryx","tag-avenue-of-the-americas","tag-bagels","tag-blank-street-coffee","tag-cartier","tag-dad","tag-fifth-avenue","tag-husband","tag-labor-day","tag-late-summer","tag-lexington","tag-locals","tag-madison","tag-monday","tag-mother-daughter-dynamics","tag-new-york-minute","tag-newbs","tag-nike","tag-nyc","tag-peloton-outdoor","tag-refuse","tag-roller-bag","tag-schmear","tag-september","tag-smoked-salmon","tag-streets","tag-summer","tag-the-city","tag-times-square","tag-tourists"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2631"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2726,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2631\/revisions\/2726"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dianaludwick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}