the great leslie

Walking to my brother's dorm today, a hawk was ruffling his feathers in a tree in Morningside Park. Two photographers were trying to catch his likeness -- a hawk in Harlem isn't the most common sight -- but, of course, the hawk didn't notice. At the entrance to the park, the contents of a woman's drawer were spilled. Makeup, pens, and buttons of every size cluttered the cement. And a little further down the block, a discarded (or lost) poem written in pink ink by an adolescent hand spoke of love: how it could make you soar, how hard one could fall. Three blocks can be a long way.