The sky
today was gray,
not dark or
particularly dreary,
uneven,
bright in patches,
as if the
brilliant blue sky of yesterday
was hovering
just overhead,
about to
come through the gray.
My left big
toe ached a little
with each
step of my left foot against the sidewalk as I entered South Park -
the bare toe I had managed to kick the back of my right ankle with
decades ago
while circling under a high flying softball
at a church
picnic.
But I would
stop noticing my toe by the time I reached the Court House.
And a little
girl sat astride one of the motionless ponies
on the tiny
merry-go-round in front of the Antique Mall.
Whether it
had been turning before I arrived or not,
I couldn’t
say.
But she sat,
wearing a fuzzy hooded parka,
the coat so
cute, only one as young as she could pull off the style,
her hands
locked onto the handles on either side of her pony’s head,
not
listening to her mother’s tale of all the things they had yet to do.
And then it
began to sprinkle.
And it
occurred to me
that it had not
occurred to me
that the
light gray sky I saw overhead as I left my house
called for
anything like an umbrella.
And then it
stopped.
And as I
crossed at Sixth Street,
half-way
home,
a young
woman,
with smooth,
bare legs
jogged
towards me
on this gray
day
two days
before the eve of the New Year.
Her pretty
cheeks were flushed,
the kind of
girl I wouldn’t have dreamed of asking out
even when I
was less than half my age.
Yet when she
passed me,
my youth but
a memory,
she looked over
at me and smiled.
That’s the
kind of gray the sky was today.
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