What grows in Brooklyn

Today he feels the last of the winter's chill leak from his unaccustomed bones. The air is heavy with moisture. The pavement shimmers in the haze. For him it is a silver pathway back into time. The faded graffitti holds hidden codes that will transport him home.
He hears the cry of a tropical bird from overhead and he feels it is his kindred, a feral misfit in this place, who has fought the hostile climate and managed to thrive. Its voice recalls his childhood paradise, where lush vegetation masked the scars of poverty and the songs told tales of sea and land, of the power of ancient spirits that fuel love, hate, life, revolution, peace, meager commerce, a brightly hued history that mesmerized the herded tourists.
A distant siren sends its call, no sea maiden of legend, rather a screaming red demon of steel, rushing on some heroic mission.
He chuckles to himself and casts a sideways glance toward a faded ruin of Victorian prosperity. It is not often that he has the leisure to take a good look at his surroundings, but on this lazy afternoon when even the rush and bustle of the city slows down to wipe its brow, he notes that the porches here deep, not so much as in the islands, but crafted with the same purpose in mind, to capture the breezes of the sea. Or here at least, the remnants of the breezes that find their way through the crowded mesh of development.
But these porches sag now, undre the weight of times turned sour. The paint is faded and chipped from the facades, leaving them raw, naked, covering themselves where they can with the encroaching forest of vine and weed. Trying to regain the modest spirit of their builders.
Yes, underneath the grime, the turbulence and decomposition of recent times, there remains the framework of other men's dreams, still sturdy, but lost to the ages in the foot traffic of millions of tiny histories.
He wonders about the man who built the house he studies. Had he also come from afar? traversed seas both tranquil and angry? faced hostility upon his arrival?
Perhaps a ruddy Irishman, the scorn of the then Anglo ruled city. But, that man had found a way to prosper, had applied his hands where they were best suited and built his dream here in wood and brick. Built it with hopes for his descendants, that this world would treat them with a dignity and respect that the old world had denied to him.
'I know this man, his hopes and thoughts.' he realized. 'They are my own. They are all of ours. They belong to all of the mulit-hued faces and many musiced voiced of everyone I pass each day.'
And for a moment, he felt pure exhileration, a simple and touching connectedness with every soul that had ever come to this puzzling place of numerous sights and smells that would dazzle the most jaded of souls.