An Ordinary Day in New Haven

I

Today, when air is heavy, thick with over-ripened thoughts,with the smell of sea lightly tingeing it with a salty taste of languor,the apocalypse unfolds. As I walk the bustling streets of New Haven,packed with sidewalk rug sales, the haunting notes from a blues harp,and oblivious college students, cell-phoned into their deluded worlds,the apocalypse seeps into the haze, some milky sidewalk spillage.

II

This late summer, languid day: sweat beads my forehead,trickles down my spine. The legs are slow. To walkis cumbersome and awkward; it grinds my breath.Yet summer holds on. The day, a gift, stultifies the mind.The footsteps of shoppers on the concrete impendthe unknown. The apocalypse wafts in the smellof fresh croissants, stares out from the titles of booksthat line bookstore windows, cascades with the coffeethat streams from the espresso machine in Starbuck's.Customers, intent to read the newspaper, take notes,have a conversation, see nothing much outside themselves.This day is shirtsleeves, shorts, and sandals, a dayto imagine lying on the beach while not at the beach.The trees are turning, ever so slowly: right nowa maple leaf falls—a scorched hand, dry, reddish brown—before me. What is left: car keys, the distant, eerie soundof a car alarm, the quiet fright of a trivial life,a portent that will blossom in vivid color at sunset.