Only Frank Sinatra could put it in a song and deliver with enunciation that any rapper would envy. The leaves falling on the hilltops of our skyscrapers and we see distant pastures in Central Park that you see in the Midwest and farms of the south land. We feel your cotton in our gloves and hoods as the rural hand stretches from downtown to uptown in Harlem where my home was once. Your faltering leaf might blow from the start of your galaxy into mine but we would always remember that the root of the tree was in the heart of your God and mine a gift to us of autumn in New York.

With both hands in pockets dodging taxicabs on Park Avenue and a push cart vendor passes by quickly realizing he is new to the job and in the wrong place. Affluent beings justly stare and pass by because there is never enough time to play class games when there is money to be made. A tall brunette passes by me and I turn for a moment and get caught by the traffic light and mid traffic I stare like a deer in the headlights. Nobody looks as they might in Minnesota when a swirl of winter wind crosses your face and a snowflake rushes ahead in announcement of a coming storm. Soon the tree will appear in Rockefeller Center and old cronies that meet once a year will meet there once again. Maybe for the last time so frail and subjective is this life of ours. Perhaps in some distant place by a stream those that watched our tree being removed will hold a drink in toast to the delight they send to the big city. The skyline weakened only slightly by the absence of what was their faithful friend and shade throughout the warmer seasons.  

With tears of lost loves and loved ones we try to conquer melancholy under the shadow of the Empire State building and the blinding stream of distant shadows that prevail when we walk past each other. A mother’s hand now deceased grasps the tip of a finger and we wonder why there has to be so much beauty in the moment of such despair. A kiss from a love of long ago is remembered in the same touch of the one today and we sip the drink of life and despair no more during autumn in New York.