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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