Helga Davis

I finally know what it is...

The birds are gone.

It was their song that welcomed me into each Spring day and the absence of their melodies has finally caught my attention.

The streets of my Harlem village offer me the sights and sounds of the world. On my block alone, there’s a Mosque, a Baptist church, a Pentecostal church, a Masonic Temple, and The Church of Latter Day Saints right there on Lenox Avenue. The Senegalese drummers wake me at dawn each Monday morning with their dance, and their offerings give rise to the incense vendors who pause five times a day and offer the most beautiful music through the hum of traffic and cries of the sliced mango vendors from Mexico.