Autumn in New York (on listening to Ella and Louis singing a song of that name)

Apple crisp evenings enveloping tree rows on the wing.

Brisk and pregnant with the starts of newness

Early avenues waken to the paper packets thrown onto sidewalks

Still smarting from yesterday’s traffic and soot, noise and bellicosity

New York is a buxom mistress, loaded to the gilt

And reaching its square sided fingers to make wind tunnels

Nothing is unusual …

The squawk of a thousand tongues, mix of garbage and pretzel salt

A storm waiting to happen

Behind closed doors, EVERYTHING is going on

Doormen smartly dressed and looking nowhere give no hint of the life behind their inscrutable lids.

I imagine discreet partying in quiet offices come Fridays by people so used to luxury they have forgotten any other way.

I imagine over ornate hangings next door to genteel literati with their faux Modiglianis and finery

I imagine quiet therapists without butt creases listening to endless litanies of sorrow, their hearts dulled by repetition.

I imagine deals and dealers, always calm and collected, on the line to Detroit or Paris or other hubs of fashion or fabrication

While outside the wind funnels and moans, leaves scurry to get there and back and moms with lads coming from the park have their noses blown and are buttoned up to the very top. It is the 50’s and who knows where we are going? Can we tell by reading the leaves?

Like a dream of yesterday creating the past in its own image we fly through that present unpretentious and unaware of the big doings to come.