By Jules Watson

Up and down the Hudson, past the promenade, under the arch, and onto the river path is a row of lampposts that gleam brightly at dusk and stand still and austere as soldiers.

Except for one near the old 79th Street boat basin that just won’t turn on.

I have often wondered if these structures have minds and hearts of their own, although they appear steely and inanimate to the human eye.

When the seductive summer breeze turns into a cool and sharp wind, there is somehow a different shade of light they cast, a burning glow, that is one of the charming and enchanted harbingers of autumn in New York…

Not everyone believes in magic, but so many things have happened in my life that cannot be explained from an intellectual or scientific point of view that what I’m about to tell you will either make you smile and say “What a vivid imagination” or “That’s happened to me, too.”

One afternoon as an impossibly beautiful amber sun was sinking below the horizon I was profoundly concentrated, remembering an old friend, long gone from this world, and taken too young.

In that moment, I felt her presence so intensely.

Did I catch a flicker of light from the forever dark lamppost?

I shivered, wondering if miracles are possible.

When we long for someone after they’re gone and dream of a sign, can they appear while sitting alone on a bench, as the river rolls by at nightfall…?

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