It’s a soft day in Harlem:  The kind where a morning mist pours off the Hudson and blurs the edges of everything.  Even Monet could not have painted it so well. 

It’s a soft day in Harlem: Where people are sleepwalking to work not stumbling blind, not miserably stamping their time sheets, but floating on last night's dreams  as if Mayor de Blasio pumped Ambien into the air, 

It’s a soft day in Harlem and the August heat is holding its breath. Let them have this morning, it seems to say; Let them sweat later.

It’s a soft day in Harlem  and the colors on Broadway blend together  in a watercolor.  The broken fire hydrants that haven’t been fixed in over three weeks  spew rainbows across 142nd.

It’s a soft day in Harlem  where a breeze persists and mixes every sound together, carries music down the avenues jumbles conversations, a hundred languages, a thousand dialects. Makes these streets a wonderful Tower of Babel. 

It’s a soft day in Harlem.  And I’m eating an orange.  And I’m walking slowly towards the subway. And I’m smiling.