and to think I saw it on mulberry street

I took this shot from my hotel room in Manhattan three blocks away and one day before that plane touched down in the Hudson River.

I was presenting in the same hotel the afternoon that it did, just before the news came in and the room started to buzz, and then later that evening I got the job of closing the bar bill, so I never got to step outside to hear the sirens in the street and see folks walking quick to the river bank, craning their necks to get a look at the miracle of a planeload of people standing in the cold water on the wings of the craft. I never got to see what I could see.

Maybe if my head hadn’t been pounding after everyone else went home and I retired to my room to order room service and work on a slide deck for the next day’s meeting, maybe I would have stepped out into the street to hear the quiet city silence that settles in after the wondering, after the what do you know about that, after the parade has passed, the lion tamer has gone, and the dustman sweeps the street.