Lion and the lamb

 

 

March 6, 1982

 

The old adage seems to be true that March comes in like a lion; hopefully it will go out like a lamb.

The wind is up, with winter still clinging to its edges as I job up River Drive in Garfield. Above me, a vivid blue sky hosts scores of puffed-up clouds that seem immune to the movement here on the ground, sunlight still pink around the tips of trees, gulls and geese crying forlornly around me as if they have lost their way, having come back too soon from the south, or having never left, stranded in this chilly day.

The tall grass, still yellow from last fall, sways along the sides of the river where the night releases its hold reluctantly, revealing slowly the imprint of footsteps that have passed between the tree trunks – fishermen who poke their bait through the cracks of ice, or the homeless from the camp on the Dundee Island side searching for firewood they can burn to keep warm – crossing the rail bridge near Monroe Street where the freight trains once crossed to feed the ever-hungry appetite of the German chemical plant, rusted rails showing along the street on this side, pointing the way to an industry long gone or on the verge of extinction, me striding in the footsteps of my ancestors as if a ghost, haunting this space each morning as I make my way up from Passaic, pausing at the riverside near the silver-sided Service Diner for coffee before retracing my steps back to the comfort of my cold water flat, embracing March as the arrival of a new season that won’t become evident yet for weeks, windy March stirring up in my blood the ache for warmth, stirring me the way it does the reeds, as if we are all somehow connected, each waiting for the lamb to arrive once the roar of the lion ceases.

 

 

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Counting reeds in winter

 

 

January 15, 1980
 
Who counts the reeds in winter, these stiff soldiers standing near the shallows of the Passaic River where Washington crossed in his retreat, leaning forward, heads heavy with the frost, swaying stiffly with the gusts of wind, the sound like the crackling of fire or breaking of ice, lined up across the river from where I sit with my morning coffee, gulls swirling near the back of the Service Diner where the vents sent out waves of heat along with the scent of fried eggs, bacon and coffee the truckers consume.
For all the sounds of the city around me, there is a strange silence, winter muffling the usual diatribe of traffic, and yet lets loose the smaller sounds coming from under the bridge across the water, the sound of falling icicles as the trucks rumble over from the mills on one side to the road leading to the highway on the other.
A few ducks and geese compete with the floating coffee cups and bottles in those rare spaces of water the ice has yet to cover, oak roots building little lean-tos over them, an old dock with splintered wood and rusted hinges providing shelter, the clatter of the moving reeds like music around us, an unintended soundtrack for a winter we struggle to endure, mocked with the shrill voices of the laughing gulls who swirl overhead, and me, in the midst of them all, counting things that do not need to be counted, wondering where I fit in all of this.

 
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