A Walk

The sound of rain hitting the deck woke me, and then the impatient call of our Siamese cat. I almost didn’t take my morning walk but then I could see that what rain there was was coming from the trees. And not the sky. So, getting dressed, letting the cat out and loading Lacy J. Dalton into the walkman, I started out on this quiet, gray, foggy, misty morning. It was cool, but not too cool, wet but not too wet and the grass and flowers seemed grateful. As I walked down my block with country music in my ears, I saw a sign on the telephone pole for a moving sale. Oh dear, the Chinese family with the two young children were leaving, another erosion in the stability of the block.

I went past the park and the baseball diamond into the little wooded area with honeysuckle, the occasional wild flowers, past the building housing the Department of Family Resolution, which had once been the school where my eldest attended kindergarten, around the walk I went, now past the high school and into the neighborhood again. The lilacs had finished blooming but peonies and small summer flowers brightened the yards. That same bold rabbit who I had seen on another day waited in a yard until I was almost upon him, then bounded away on important business. Now past the small creek and up my block to breakfast, the newspaper which would bring me back to the present and then—writing class.