Winter's walk

Walking, worrying words,

a story, unwritten,

wandering loose,

unwinding and winding.

Somewhere near the bridge,

the words let me go.

A tune takes its place.

I see the sunlight, setting.

Shadows, working their way

up the westerly facing storefronts,

solstice sunlight, gilding.

To look too closely at the

workings of my

mind doesn’t work.

Neither does not looking.

But to see the sunlight

is a blessing.

Present imperfect

I would like to say that it was a perfect day, but Dawn and I had already bickered, idling at the gas station before we left Lawrence. After nearly thirty years, my wife is still too quick and I am still too slow.

But the sun was coming out to bright blue skies after days of clouds, even though it was rising low over bare branches to the south, the winter solstice – our anniversary – only a week away.

Dawn had informed me that we were going to see an exhibit of Michelangelo and I had very readily agreed. And then, when we were approaching only a few short blocks from Union Station in Kansas City, I saw a billboard announcing the exhibit of Leonardo DaVinci. One renaissance man is much like another, we more or less agreed. And so we touched and didn’t touch the models of DaVinci’s brilliant vision according to the little placards. There were wooden pulleys that pulled and flying contraptions that wouldn’t. The reproductions of his paintings appeared  cracked and crumbling just like the originals we couldn’t actually see. And Michelangelo hadn’t painted the ceiling at Union Station. Yet it was still magnificent so very high above our heads.

But one barista is not like another and Kristina would be working at the Chez Elle, a creperie and coffee shop in the Crossroads. We took Broadway Street only to turn around to take Broadway Boulevard, instead. We found her more than an hour after lunch time. I would have liked to have hugged her but the counter got in the way. We smiled and spoke warmly. There were sugar cookies that she had baked under the glass – green and red sprinkles on cream cheese frosting.

And I would have liked to have just looked at her longer and I would have liked to have talked with her longer - even about nothing very much - but she was working. I had gotten to know her at Aimee’s coffee shop in Lawrence and meeting each other in passing has been as close to perfection that we will get.

The asparagus tips and the Black Forest ham wrapped in a savory crepe with some creamy sauce were some bites too few and yet more than enough. The coffee was good - and not because Kristina made it. She had, of course, but I had the iced tea.

Dawn and I sat and ate by a window, talking of nothing much. The Paris skyline was on the wall. An arm’s length away, I watched my longtime love catch first one wire of one earring – and then the other - in her scarf wrapped around her neck. Folds of colored threads in a fabric of loose loops, catching.

Her scarf reminded me a lot of Kristina’s colored skirt wrapped around her hips – her younger body and legs sheathed in black. I hadn’t noticed her earrings, or if she wore any - yet somehow I remember the loops on the laces of her boots. We got our chance for hugs before we left, Kristina’s  voice so unmistakably hers in my ear for a moment.

But the perfect day was still awaiting.

Dawn and I wandered into the afternoon, warm for December, but maybe not for Kansas. But we were now over the line. We looked at old and magnificent houses, stories on the hill, modern styles mixed with the old. Dawn took my picture with the Performing Arts Building in the background and she remembered that we had forgotten to get a photo with Kristina.

But it wasn’t the photo that I was lamenting. Once again – once upon a time - it was that the time itself had moved too quickly. Thirty years and a day have turned out to be so far from perfect and yet so close to more than I would ever have been able to dream of when we set out.

The sun was lowering and Dawn and I got into our car and we turned north on Summit when we should have turned south – and then we drove many blocks south so that we could go north on 35. And then so soon curving onto I-70 west.

So many moments I would have held longer.

Leftover chicken-beer stew over rice a little too old by candlelight at home. So savory. Plastic greenery over archways hung with Christmas ornaments as old as our marriage. A little cheer.

Even the moment hours later when Dawn blocked my way coming out of the bathroom after I had brushed my teeth, the look so warm in her eye, the sound of her voice, soft. They are still close in my mind, not faded. To think, if she hadn’t been too quick to say ‘yes,’ we would never have made it this far. And, no, we never had kids. But we have come as close as we can come so many times.  And we reach for them a year or a day at a time.

And now, today’s another day. I won’t remember every moment of time lingering longer or shorter. I hope never to forget the looks and sounds of imperfect love. There simply seems to be a lot of catching in life, but not so very much caught.

There will be time

I walk along the levee as late afternoon turns to evening. The dark gray clouds overhead are roiled and scudding towards the north. I look across the river to trees along the far bank that have mostly lost their leaves for this year.  As the sun nears the horizon, I can see red rays touching the trailing strands of clouds and turning them dark red. Almost the color of blood.

And then the earth turns farther around and in about a minute all is gray again. But there is still light. Along the edges of the earth where the cloaking layer of clouds haven’t reached is an irregular band of yellowing blue. And up, higher, where the clouds are trying to break apart, brightness. And there are electric lights, car lights - signs of human beings everywhere.

I like to walk alone with myself in a world both scarred and beautiful. I mostly see the beauty. What we have done to the earth and to ourselves in our unceasing quest for happiness has already been done. It’s a kind of spilled milk. And we should do better. And it must also be acknowledged that nature, with its order, is also random and arbitrary, often destroying as it builds up.

And, yes, human beings have also managed to do some things right. People are nature too and we sometimes do some things in a harmonious dance with the rest of nature. And so here we are at this moment in time. One part of it all. A little too proud of ourselves as sapient humans. As if we, alone, had created ourselves.

But why should I waste more time railing against human hubris and the wreckage we have left in our wake? The mystery beckons. Why do I see beauty at all? How can what I see as I walk along this man-handled river seem so wondrous to me? What can it all possibly mean?

And now I am possibly leaning too far over that edge, as well. The mystery will have to wait. Better to return to the hard gravel top of the levee under my feet as I walk along the river.

I turn, now following the red tail lights heading across the near side of the bridge into the city. Then I walk underneath the bridge and out onto the other side.

There will be time. Eliot said it in Prufrock. Now I repeat it. There will be time.

I pause, looking out over limestone boulders. The river flows. The quantity of time spent in  watching and waiting seems not very important this evening.

Then, eventually, I head home. The sky – now darkening, a rough gray – is reflected in the river below me as I recross the Kaw River Bridge. Trees, sandbars, the muddy water, the Bowersock hydropower plant. And downtown Lawrence ahead of me. And then, past South Park and Central Middle School, and then onto New Hampshire Street.

I step through the front door. Everything has changed, but I am not astonished that everything appears to be very much the same. Heraclitus wrote more than two thousand years ago that no one can step in the same river twice. I think that he was saying something about time. So very many humans have.

I can walk across the Kaw River Bridge, turn, and walk back home in about an hour. Often it takes longer. But each time I walk - each and every step that I take is taken only once. Time does not wait for me. Or hurry on ahead. Light speeds and appears to stand still. The passage of time is embedded in every place and every thing in the universe. And yet there is so much to notice other than the inexorable passage of time.

I will have supper with my wife. And that time, too, will slip-slide away without our assistance. I am left with more questions than answers.

But I can say this much. The last red rays of a setting sun drew me outward. And the pale yellow light beckoned from the windows of my home.

And I will give Mr. Eliot the last words:

There will be time, there will be time

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet…


**

There will be time
Audio version:

Girl at the corner

 

I paused at the corner.

Crossing through the walk,

an evergreen pickup

with an extended cab

rolled through with a girl

hunkered down in the back seat –

window glass rolled down,

her face opening outward,

her eyes drifting towards the corners.

If she sang with her lips,

I couldn’t see it.

Her hair, light brown,

fluttering in waves

across her forehead.

Our eyes met in the middle;

I’m sure of it.

But what?

Did she see

what I saw -

looking at her face

searching from the window opened

to that early fall air.

  

And what?

There was a full lane

plus peripherals

between my body standing

and her’s slumping.

And undoubtedly mine slumping

and her half-opening eyes

into her young life

rising.

She rode a chariot of fire;

my faltering feet mired 

in unyielding pavement.

If I ever see her again,

there will be no hint of recognition.

Yet for the briefest moment on Mass St

our eyes crossed and we did meet each other

in the simple time and tangible space of a crosswalk.

And what?