Behold The City Brilliant

Awash in clear morning light, her sidewalks hold us up. The air is so clean. The air is so fresh. The air is so new, promising a today we have never heard of before. The nosy grey pigeons gather on the ledge atop a Macy’s window; a group of young faces stares at the display of wool sweaters, alongside the designer, his grey ponytail shaking over his potbelly as he says, “I don’t like that angle.”

Turquoise Tiffany’s boxes filled with silver bracelets and charms glisten in the sunlight atop a card table. “They’re real, pick ’em up and hold ’em,” the salesman says, a black man in a navy blue sweatsuit. “Get ’em now, when they’re gone they’re gone. Each piece twenty dollars, three for fifty because I’m in a good mood this morning.”

Like a human body, the city renews itself with little more than air light and water. Washed and dried, it breathes once more. It wears the white gown of forgiveness, a soft garment, oft neglected. Touch it, it’s real. Like a human body, the human mind renews itself with forgiveness, a dropping, a release into the void of those dots on the distant horizon that became mountains, for a moment.

And here we are, today again. It’s just today, over and over again. The voices on the breeze float in and out. The places we have been are stacked one upon the other, the Earth turned inside out. All is reduced to the words, which crumple and compel us. A November rose lingers in the snow, drawing two worlds together to embrace. Its promise thrills and entices beyond what is known. 

The unspeakable is that which clothes itself in our bodies and looks out through our eyes.