Nice While it Lasted

The sun is almost set as I walk back from the drug store, and the low light caresses the high steeple of the church in gold, turning the edifice into a stack of honeyed bricks.

I can feel in the cooling autumn air an older Brooklyn, one that's closer to New England than the mid-Atlantic states. I've walked streets like this, in Massachusetts, in Maine, old streets that remember other voices that spoke differently, with a slower tempo than New York's crazy rhythm.

Just for a moment, I'm there, and I breathe deep before a honking horn from a gypsy cab brings me back.