One Perfect Day in New York City   Welcome to one perfect day in New York City: a warm cotton-soft day, a cool day, so good to walk, to glide through the air — an unexpected day of grace when time is not the enemy. Truly, a free day, unclocked, unencumbered, off the books,   beckoning. A day like this is the book you always wanted to read, and New York is the author. Open it. Wander free in its pages of dreaming streets, still cool this morning, still unread. You have the time. The city is quiet, traffic is light. Air   streams gently through the plane trees, golden air, rich with the scent of fresh bagels, old books, lingering perfume. Up Broadway to Times Square, somehow the word is out, all New York is in on the secret of this bright, cool day, strangers smile slyly as they pass, free   of their strangeness, their hurry and fear, free of their habits of unbeauty. The air, the faces, the streets shimmer with a cool, new-minted shine. Glancing up from their books, people in buses smile slyly. New York, this is your one perfect day, take the time   to love it. Ask anyone for the time, the answer is yes; ask the price, it’s free. The museums are all open. “New York . . . ,” you murmur, meaning all of it: the air, the buildings, the faces, the streets, the books. Even elevator musak is cool   music on a magic day like this. Cool jazz — a sax that knows its way around time, when to bend it, when to go by the book, when to open the cage of the sounds, free to echo through the streets and fill the air like doves on this flawless day in New York.   Soon the cool melodies shake themselves free of time and lift us, rising in the air above the books, and beauty, and New York.                                                           for Meg     © Michael Fleming New York, New York May 2001