THE SOUND COMES FIRST: air and water rushing down-gutter, cacophony resembling a child with a straw at the end of a glass.
* * * * *
I intended to walk in the weather, letting the season soak my steps. I did, a few blocks, pausing at the scream-run-laugh of a brother and sister, simultaneously ignoring their father's half-hearted pleas to avoid mud, and trying to coax their baby sister from her cautious place on the porch.
Down to the end of the block, around and starting back up I watched the golden-blue reflections of streetlights and televisions. And then I stopped. I stopped and watched the sidewalk move in contracting and expanding lines. Some slow, some fast, moving blind over the rough of pavement and the smooth of eachanother. One ancient behemoth emerged from the fray, fat with the maturity of the earth, making a determined, inefficient path from one side to the other. I could only watch bemused, ambivalent and wondering. How many times had he wandered like tonight - never sure of direction, simply knowing that surviving means moving. He wasn't alone. Indeed somewhere in the middle an indecisive pile was forming before my eyes. Halfway between earth and earth they had lost purpose, or the will to survive.
I kept moving.
* * * *
The cold comes last. What isn't obvious in the walking becomes clear in the still indoor air. Spring has made it's way through the layers to the core; I stand shivering, barefoot and happy.
