going home

I decided to walk crosstown yesterday when I turned the corner just in time to see the M79 pulling away from the curb. I always get lost in Central Park. Its irrevocably rounded paths smirk at my thwarted attempts to find straight streets in this green revelry of smug circles. The curved horizon of buildings along Central Park West and 5th Avenue peeks out tantalizingly square and angular over soft green treetops. Against Manhattan’s meticulous grid, Central Park works in coy curves, defying the regularity of upright straight numbered streets and emphatically historic avenues: Lexington, Madison, Columbus, Amsterdam. Here, paths lead into darkened overpasses, overhanging branches, the remnants of a softball game—gangly players all dressed in red. A strand of bright yellow leaves breaks the hanging green curtain along the path. The sun sets slowly at the end of the hour, forty seven minutes past five in the evening; the park’s verdure suffused with amber light. Along the tree-lined path, a young woman sits alone on a park bench, bare feet dangling beside her shoes, talking on her cell phone with perfectly affected sophistication.

Today, a dragonfly got lost in my downtown 6 train; suddenly bursting into the air-conditioned interior, the woman sitting beside me hastily got up and moved away. It settled on a man’s shoulder bag, becoming suddenly still: black gossamer wings fanned open extending off its long thin body streaked with emerald green, all filigree veins exposed under flourescent lights. Instantaneous flight: it sprang into the air, circling silver hand bars, hovering unsteadily before a long strip of Budweiser ads, amber liquid suspended mid-splash.