sounds from a cracked window

The other night, sitting quietly at home on the futon with Doxy, one widow cracked to the sounds of our neighborhood. How often do I just sit and listen?

The F & the G trundling over the elevated tracks

An occasional service train’s industrial hum

A neighbor’s droning TV - the infinitely present human voice

The jingling of another dog on a walk

Gruff talk from passersby, often upset over something

Traffic – thinning now – on Smith St.

An ambulance howling past a block, a world away

Water running through the building’s pipes

This is “quiet” in New York.

The city is always moving. It seems alive: If we all disappeared tomorrow, it feels like it would spring new life from its sidewalks and slick streets. How in the world is this so…Wouldn’t the black soil of farmland be a better place for life to come from? No, for some reason, if it had to start all over again, I think life would somehow rise up from the oily puddles and leaf-clogged gutters of a city like New York.