1.
AM.
Awake to
Sunlight, grayed, filtered through weighty clouds,
To a Monday city, oddly subdued, atoning.
Paper pillars, collapsed into untidy pyramids, beckon attention.
Two cups of coffee, black.

2.
PM.
Plunged into a placid turquoise wetness,
Itself encased in gridded white and tan ceramics of a bygone era.
I, the lone disturbance, splash silver droplets,
Tossing them over the water's surface, like mercurial sparks,
Exhaling silver spheres that zigzag their way up to the ether.
Light from high, arched, mullioned windows illuminates the deep end,
Projecting silhouettes of rippling surface currents onto the tiles below.
I release my weight, my self, to the mass of clear blue,
And it holds me.

3.
Dusk.
In the west, a neon orb, leaving afterimages in my retina,
Quickly slips below a blue gray horizon.
Flat, charcoal and burnt umber clouds
Blanket a candy-hued pink sky dotted with cold, blue white puffs.
They recede eastward, a ponderous canopy, heavy and potbellied.
Street lamps suddenly lit on the distant shore,
Barges and tugs crawl upriver,
A lone, silent sailboat glides down,
A chilly wind makes black ripples on a river of steel gray.

4.
Night.
The first moments east, crisscrossing traffic draws lines of pale yellow and red lights,
While windows awaken in a dense, rectilinear mass of stone, brick, glass and steel.
Familiar spires, spotlit, tower over right-angled rooftops of pale gray tar paper,
And, there, the once tallest building, sadly noble with its unmistakable profile,
Stands eerie in its own white glow.
All this and more accompanied by the cacophony of urban belches, hums, screeches and whines,
Distant drones of helicopter propellers, the nearby squeaking of a vent cap whirling in the wind.
The city, aswirl, on display in its vulgar glory, smugly indifferent to the change of season,
Splashes the low-hung clouds with its own light,
Tinges them red and mauve,
Paints them with its energy in a strange artificial hue.
I stand in awe.

by Amelia Trader
NYC