Night Music

The Philharmonic plays light selections of classical music while we sit on the grass in the park and eat until we have to stop because to eat any more would be injurious. Afterwards there are fireworks, greens and purples and reds and golds sparkling in the sky over our heads, and I try to conjure up the feelings fireworks gave me as a child, the wonder and awe, but for some reason I keep thinking of Weimar Germany, and so many families for whom the upcoming Fourth of July festivities celebrating freedom will just be empty words.

We walk home beside the park afterwards, all the plants exhaling slow, green air for us to inhale, and families and couples peel off down particular side streets according to their privilege. We turn off a bit further along, mostly just following the crossing lights, and see cranes above the buildings, paused in their work remaking the face of Brooklyn, their long necks and heads lowered like enormous, heavy animals, slumbering in the twilight of the glow of the city that burns the thin clouds orange and gray.