Good Friday

Outside, the weather was gorgeous and green. In the span of days, the world had turned from the cadaverous gray of late winter to the forgetful middle of Spring. Where had all of the flowers come from? When had the dried twigs sticking up alongside the road had the time to blossom into seed catalog fountains of pink and yellow?

Nobody knows or if they do nobody listens.

Warm weather brings everyone out. Birds and squirrels hop from branch to branch, while sleepy bugs burrow their way out from the rotten wood. Joggers, some sweaty and doughy from a well-fed winter, take to the sidewalks and run by the river in pairs or alone. Many huff and flail their limbs desperately, their eyes wide and wild, almost frightened.

Any minute one of them could fall over, roll down the bank into the river and disappear.

Others, more sensibly, start with a walk or else let themselves be dragged by their tiny dogs. Some of them hold leashes in one hand with a smoldering cigarette in the other. Some of them smoke, drag their dogs while they steer lisping motorized wheelchairs.

It's fascinating to watch. I drove around the block to see it twice.

The junkies were out, too, wearing dirty tee-shirts and moving like George Romero zombies as they crossed the road. I watched two of them sit at a bus stop, both grinning at each other like drugstore jack-o-lanterns while a third stood, arms by his side, palms out and eyes closed waiting for the sun to stop talking to him.