Above the City

Hudson Review, The, Winter 2002 by Tomlinson, Charles

New York

It would be good to pass the afternoon under this lucid sky, strolling at rooftop level this city above the city, all the tubular protuberances, chimneys, triangular skylights, sheds that have lost their gardens spread before one. The details are not delicate up here among the pipes and stacks, the solid immovables, and yet each outcrop affords a fresh vista to the promeneur solitaire-- though only the pigeons are properly equipped to go on undeterred by changes of level where one of their flat-footed number suddenly launches itself off the cornice sideways taking its shadow with it and bursts into dowdy flower, blossoms in feathery midair to become all that we shall never be, condemned to sit watching from windows the life of those airy acres we shall never inherit.