Motorcars, Handlebars

The heat has come on at 295 5th Avenue, and the dusty, smoky smell of the ancient furnace fills every room.
The air grows dry, crackles with dryness. The pipes clang and pop, startling me out of my nap on the couch. My book has fallen out of my hands, onto the floor; my glasses are askew. It was the heat that drove me out onto the street, and it's fall, there on the sidewalk, that fills my lungs with sharp air and makes my heart pound.

There are old men sitting on their usual stoop on Carroll Street. The one in the thick dark-rimmed glasses I have known for years. This man speaks maybe 10 words of English, and I speak only a few more in Spanish, but what needs to be said, is said, and understood, and we are always happy to see each other. Today he looks a bit glum, and I know it's because the Yankees broke his heart the other night. Acorns, falling from the trees above, roll along the sidewalk.

Walking over the Gowanus Canal, there is a man standing on the bridge where I usually stop to look down into the water. I have seen him there before. I stand next to him for a minute, and we are both looking at the leaves and tiny silver fish go by. "Do you remember when the jellyfish were here?" I ask him. "Oh sure," he says. "They get washed in by the tide." We stand for a while longer, quietly. Before I turn to go, he says, maybe to me, maybe to himself, "I come here every day, and every day the water looks different than the day before."

By five, I am at O'Connors, the only one in the place for a little while, besides the bartender, who is an old friend. I spend every late Saturday afternoon here lately, talking to the Irish guys who come in to toast Ireland and God, and the old men who sit quietly, wrapped in loneliness, drinking budweiser from the fancy old glasses Pat bought in the '70s. Outside, the street is growing darker, and I have a glass of my own in front of me. I am drinking to make the fall last longer, to keep the winter at bay. To keep the leaves on the trees a few more weeks.

Wine and cheese, wine and cheese


*This update typed while listening to John Denver.