Bay Lights

Bay Lights

The past few days were hot and humid both, as the dog days often are, this time of year.

I’d wondered if the breezes by the ocean might be cooler than the air that rose from heated streets.

And so tonight I walked down to the Bay and saw the distant lights reflected from the tops of waves.  These swept towards the shore and softly splashed—again and yet again.

And all the rest was dark, as waters are on moonless nights—with stardust spread above.

But city lights had hidden much. 

I only saw the stars of Coney and of Staten Island, with the glowworms crawling on the Verrazano  Bridge—as fireflies slowly rose and arced from JFK.

And faraway, beyond the Jersey shore, from time to time I saw the lightning flash and set ablaze a bank of clouds—without a sound.

And walking back, before the thunderstorm, I saw the headlights speeding on the Belt, in obvious haste to go to—where they went.

The breezes?  Yes, they’d cooled me down a bit.  They freshened as I walked towards my home.

I’d read that LED’s make more of light and less of heat.  On Brooklyn’s sleeping streets, they’d turned the night, in parts, to pallid day.

The storm?  It never came.  It still is hot.

But I remember walking through the night and seeing then the lights, by Gravesend Bay.

And that is still relief.

2018 August 1st, Wed.
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York.

Experience

Experience

There was little to know or to understand,
As I stood where the ocean meets the land.
I could see, by the light that was ebbing fast,
The sea and the clouds of the storm that passed.
I could feel the wind and the drops of rain.
I could hear the waves as they crashed again.
I could smell the scents in the breeze that blew.
And there, for that time, that was all I knew.

2018 July 22nd, Sun.
Brooklyn, New York