TheBanyanTree: Hudson River Ozone Blues

[redd_clay at bellsouth.net]

It's Wednesday on a late, late July night, just one day from the dog days of August and I'm on the Hudson again.

The ozone is thick over the river and the GWB* is almost impossible to make out against against a backdrop of New York City haze.  A deep breath of the air brings hints of the air after a heavy thunderstorm:  the unmistakable bittersweet odor of three atoms of oxygen pegged together -- ozone

The mercury has pushed up to the 90 degree mark on the tube and the humidity is high enough leave you sopping wet, panting & praying for a cooling breeze to bring the simple pleasure of sweet evaporation.

Two guys in sweat-soaked shirts bang out fresh tunes in front of the Whiskey Rio,  sometimes framming, sometimes stroking, sometimes abusing the strings and bridges on their acoustic guitars.  A pair of bongos adds rhythm and the now the crowd's getting into it.

I could've' taken a ride on the water taxi to Haverstraw Marina, from there maybe hitched a ride on a sloop up to West Point, up to and past the castle on Bannerman Island Arsenal, taken the scenic train up toward Saratoga Springs or just cooled it by the brackish waters of the lower Hudson.

But I've chosen to cool it and feed the parking meter at the public parking at the Yonkers pier.  A dollar buys me an hour of freedom and pleasure tonight.  And that's a New York bargain, my friend.

This pungent ozone hovering over the heights of Hudson has, oddly enough, reminded me that I miss you so, so much.  I can't wait to see you and to hold you in my arms again.  I can't wait to tell you how beautiful you are . . . and how miserable, how incomplete,  life can be without you.

It's a melancholy I can handle.  It's a try as I might I can't feel like I fit here, a New York's not really my home kinda' melancholy.    

It's a  melancholy that matches the Palisades cliffs and hangs in my heart like the haze over the tide now reversing the great, green, life-giving waters of the Hudson.

I sit here and admire the crowd, dig the tunes, lean back against theweather worn moorings of a dilapidated boat dock and dream.  I dream ofhiking the lofty heights of Bear Mountain, crossing the bridge upriverin the morning fog, sleeping under the stars,  and holding you tightagainst me, together warding off the cold, together fighting the fearof the unknown.



*George Washington Bridge