It's almost a cliche...

It's really almost a cliche...the Manhatten skyline from the Promenade in Brooklyn. You look at all those buildings, all those windows...all those buildings that are there now, and the two that once were there and are now gone.
All those windows, all those lights, all those lives. Windows, lights and lives present and now gone. Gone from the cliche, making what seems almost ordinary one minute, extraordinary the next with what is absent. Gone.

And while we're at the East River: I don't think there's anything more haunting, sadder and yet comforting than an old, abandoned pier. A pier that now has shrubs and grasses growing on it and long-ago used railroad tracks on it; tracks that end in the East River