Past the uncertainty of the West Nineties to the lower Eighties. She chose a side street, where the architecture reflected an earlier age, a more civilized era. Or was it? Her gaze was pulled upward, toward curved ivy leaves etched in stone, swirling wrought iron railings folding over antique window panes and her eye was caught by one minute detail. Patterns formed in the stone, swerving and curling into -- what was it? A face? Was it man or beast? She noted the simple eyes and puckered lips. Again, similar faces met her gaze. At last, there appeared a lion, snarling and growling silently in the ancient stone. A pudgy child-like face, frozen in a granite yawn, unable to break the stone, protruded from a banister. Lions, brass hoops dangling from their teeth, guarded private doors which forgotten keys, long lost, had forever locked...Bearded wise men held forbidden secrets, their stares fixed, stoic. From bannisters of porches, rooftops, and cornices, came faces of all sorts, some resemblances, others unique, humans and gargoyles, at all angles, some disguised, others obvious, all fascinating.
She stopped and stared, stepped further, stopped again -- arrested in her tracks at their ancient beauty.
She approached the metropolis of Broadway, the alluring pink and lime green, aqua, coral and purple storefronts so unlike the doldrums of the Upper East Side.
The earthiness of West End Avenue calmed her. Quiet brick residences rose high along the streets. Riverside Drive curved along the Park on the Hudson River, creating unexpected corners in the streetscape.
Neighborhood kids, sporting last year's spring jackets, shot a frisbee across the marble steps of the Sailors and Soldiers Monument at Riverside Park. Its columns reached into the blue sky, full of promise on this glorious afternoon.
She stepped down to the river walkway, settling herself against the rounded outpost of the fortress wall and gazed out over the vibrant blue waters of the River.
ALL THAT GLITTERS
Winter of '87
Doc. # 0214D
Denise Hickey
