Streetlamps drizzle sodden light through the trees’ uplifted arms, launching possibility into the late afternoon.
Buses groan after their long-exceeded schedules, jolting cheek by jowl with cars ejected by office garages.
Spread over us, a hushed skein of sound.
From the plate glass, behind the fervent shovelers, a more extroverted light shines on the promise of folding happiness into shopping bags.
Hawkers who count greenbacks toward their rent shake down the crowd with nylon necessities and tin ornaments.
We ring out to each other, poised at the subway exits and tangled intersections.
Slowly a battened-down figure with stapled brow glides along the hard slick puddles.
Stranger after stranger, chaperones to a young mother wrapped in wool, tug her carriage across battered snowbanks.
A glowing breath hovers, coursing in us with the ecstatic city.
Andy Oram
February 21, 2022