journal-08/31/00

08/31/00

(observations...)

an old man
uses all strength from the even older
wooden park bench
to boost him up,
and i become drunk
with anticipation
just watching his slow,
deliberate shuffles
inching him forward--
he walks as a 100 year-old man might
walk, with his cane in a blizzard
with the wind blowing so strongly against him
it nearly knocks him over,
and by the time he takes his next step
the dent left in the earth below
in his previous step
has already long forgotten
he ever tread there.

*** ****** ***

i watch a young girl walk briskly
towards two squirrels--
slowing down, stopping,
squatting as she comes six feet from them.
she holds out her hand with
something in it--
they come to her
and scatter away,
her father projecting
quiet admonitions to her in spanish
as he too stops and sits on the ground
across the walkway from his daughter--

i smile,
the voyeur--

i miss my father...

*** ****** ***

a woman crosses the street
so tall and thin that she appears to
jut forward nervously,
shaking, as if
her torso is her whole body
and her legs are those of a
daddy long legs spider--
or else she is what small children draw
when they mean to draw themselves
and their families--
a stick figure,
with only a face
and fine lines for torso and limbs,
with big goofy white-shoed feet
and no hands