A light rain in Inwood and the empire of snow melts and the music is out of
its case with the small islands of people gathered in their rooms with all the
curtains open so that all the views get all mixed up with the talk that gets all
mixed up with the train whistle (where does it come from when one never
sees the train?) and planes overhead; a siren, a car horn.
There’s always someone playing a scale on a flute or a piano in the same key.
And then, that nothing that feels like the end of youth.
I love it in the almost spring when the opera singers in their tight dresses
open their windows as wide as their mouths proclaiming NO SHAME
like old New York when people came here to start everything moving and
life was informal and from a window some tousled head drooped over a
ledge and yelled: “WAIT THERE, I’m throwing down the keys.”