One of the most highway riddled patches of the city sits a few steps from Flushing Meadows Park in Queens. The Grand Central Parkway runs just to the west, the Van Wyck Expressway to the east, the Long Island Expressway to the north. On-ramp and off-ramp, over-pass and under, curve and swoop, concrete birds of prey fated to fly the same flight for eternity.
Nestled inside one such swoop is a small
clearing of over-grown grass and tupelo trees which bloom for about three days in May and otherwise bow numbly to the fetid highway fumes.
My son and I take our bikes past on the way to the park, a regional paradise where the air breathes notionally cleaner. I have never seen a soul inside this swoop. Today, we hear a haunting sound emitting from it and rising above the traffic din. We turn to see a lone bagpiper in full voice, walking small circles beneath the trees. Sonny Rollins with his bridge has come to Queens.
The piper wears a black bowler and his keenings float among the traffic and the trees, at once benediction and lament. He stops, we applaud, he takes a couple steps toward us as if to speak. Then he turns away, fiddles with the pipes and resumes his keening song.
-2005