Snow He Was a Friend Of Mine

Hooray! We love snow!

Snow is here! -- softening edges, muffling noise,  bringing tree skeletons to life: it’s miraculous!
It’s bliss!
Lovely snow! Beautiful snow! Let’s stop and throw a snowball. Make snow angels! Pull down on that evergreen branch and we’ll take a snow shower!


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We emerge from our domiciles with wonder and trepidation. Some make the careful transfer from house to car, car to work, work to car, and home again. Others spend the day sledding and exhilarating. Our world is January’s page -- torn from a calendar. We rustle up big, steaming pots of soup and dig our thick socks out of the drawer.

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Life resumes…..the snow is pushed to the side of the road. We have places to be and time doesn’t really stop. There’s catching up to do but damn, it’s cold outside. Salt on the roads sticks to our cars. Hey there, snow – we give a cursory acknowledgment as we drive past.

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Dirty now and covered with mud from intermittent melting and traffic, the snow holds no joy for us. Life has thrown mud all over our good, beautiful snow. It needs to leave already. Go on, get out of here. It was nice, we enjoyed you, but we don’t want to see you like this. Tarnished. Ugly. Brown. Or worse - yellow. 

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For the love of God! Five more inches of the hated stuff last night! I’ve had enough of Snow. I’m ready for Spring.

Walking Man

Moving in silent desperation
Keeping an eye on the holy land

a hypothetical destination

Say, who is this walking man?

                             -- James Taylor

He walks.
Along the road.
Whenever I see him, I think,
“There goes Walking Man.”


I don’t know where he goes,
or where he’s been,
but I see him sometimes in the evening
as I’m coming off of I-29 at my exit.


In the hour of the long shadow,
at the onset of dusk,
he’s walking alongside 64th Street
right where it crosses
under the overpass.


Traffic is nuts here –
the intersection bloats with cars,
stacked up and waiting
for a green light to release them unto their final destination.

But still, oblivious, he walks.


His gait is unnatural and herky-jerky, as if walking requires some skill beyond just setting one foot down in front of the other. He carries one arm close to his body, and there’s an extra beat per measure, somehow, in his gait.

The first time I saw him I thought, “Oh my god, that guy is loaded -- and he’s going to walk right into traffic!”

Walking Man has white hair, almost shoulder length, and a frightening grimace that is a perpetual look of anguish. After seeing him a few times, I began to realize that he wasn’t scary and he wasn’t drunk. Well, he could be drunk or high. He definitely has some serious infirmity, though whether it be of body, mind, or heart, I couldn’t say.  

Mainly, he walks.

In the summer - with waves of heat turning the pavement to jelly and distorting my view of him -  he was walking then.

Last winter he wore a stocking cap and a coat, but he walked. When the snow was deep, Walking Man trudged on. What was so important that he just had to get out? I’m not sure but it seems like the walk is the thing. He’s never carrying anything.

I’ve invented stories in my head to explain his walking: he’s a Vietnam vet who walks to forget the horrors of war; he’s had an unfortunate accident is walking for therapy, determined to regain full use of his body; he’s a drugged out weirdo who gets hammered and then decides he needs to walk down the road… for a fix…for some booze….maybe he thinks he’s walking an imaginary dog.

But you know, Walking Man doesn’t care what I think.
Obviously.

A few days ago, I saw Walking Man wearing a bright orange vest with reflective stripes on it – like the ones that highway workers wear. I like to think that somebody else who watching this saga unfold cares about what happens to Walking Man, and has donated the vest so that he maybe won’t get hit by a car. Because you know, he’s our Walking Man, and we have to look out for him, a little bit.