Manhattan Melody.

I was up early this morning.

Rosy-fingered dawn was gripping the eastern horizon. A sky like Homer saw, or Gilgamesh, or Don Quixote. The same sky.

Salmon-colored streaks of cirrus over the sweeping parabola of the Hell's Gate Bridge and the turreted towers of the Triboro.

A plane taking off from LaGuardia, five miles east split the nascent sunrise.

A silver crescent of the moon like an Arabian flag.

Below the diamond brightness of Venus, the morning star.

The river was flowing in from the sea and flat and fast.

The lighthouse, the grey stone lighthouse that was knocked out by Sandy, was back on, its dim light illuminating nothing more than a path for runners.

A tug pushed downriver a threesome of barges out to sea.

Some boys were playing already a game of four on four on the basketball courts.

Women kicked and rotated and bent to the gruff of their exercise instructor.

This was my morning.

Far away from the turbulence of the world and the boil of the office.

Quiet.