cold clear mid-afternoon, early winter, 2019
The sun hanging on to the southwest, dusk approaches soon. Legs unsteady, expecting a quiet Monday solitary run, surprised by the humanity. How is it possible to run straight into an amusement park today? Streaming groups of teens and adults with laughter and anticipation, bundled up babies more than I can count. A perfect long line of schoolchildren, holding hands two by two, they seem to smile with the happiness of early youth, content to be out in the world with each other.
Down and away now, walkers and runners in ones and twos, cross the roadway while taxis race ahead. As winter approaches the chestnut trees have hardened and shed their leaves, save one with an apron of gold; still hanging on for another week. Tan and brown the already fallen leaves cover the damp ground, mixed with the green of grass and softening it. Squirrels chase round and round together, well fed and weighed down by the chestnuts now gone from the ground, consumed, or buried for winter treasure. Out further now as the shadows approach, the gardens of Italy and the over and up and what is the sound above I see parrots, and starlings and blackbirds the trees shelter them all, then on up to the Physical Energy Statue “that restless physical impulse to seek the still unachieved in the domain of material things.”
Now turn at a walking pace. So much more to see, young men on horseback, now 30 swans they sit quietly near the Long Water, a slow dance, for what do they wait, do they wait smugly for spring to return? And now back up and out and my own energy restored… Glorious life, sometimes muted yet enhanced by the season; it shows through the approaching shadows.
Afterword I move through the streets, one of a million souls, life is intense in the city and though I am alone here; I feel connected to the people and their unknown lives and stories, with wonder.