Tuesday, August 7, 2007

Bees & Butterflies

WHAT I SEE - inspired by E. Annie Proulx (Postcards)

Tall majestic trees lining the road called "The Scenic Loop" in Cherokee park reaching upwards for miles and miles creating a ceiling of green diffused light. Dappled blasts of hot light scorch the roadway dancing with each longed for prayed for anticipated breeze. The smallest white butterflies maybe an inch in diameter flit from flower to grass stalk buzzing and looping like a bi-plane, hundreds of them, not banded together like a flock, but scattered throughout the entire loop, everywhere you look for them. Runners go past you avoiding eye contact or a glance in your direction, ignoring you in their misery self-imposed heat stroke hot muggy hell. The walkers smile. I smile back. "good-morning". Bikers are intense. Even the smallest of them, on a small bike with small helmet on small head asks Gramps if he can have one last drink. Hydrating up for the ride. Hydrating up after the ride? I never see them again on the loop. The block stone  monuments on bridges dedicated to those long gone. What remains are small testimonies to a grand life. Why did those punks those hoods knock down and vandalize the bridge? All that remains are the broken pedestal bottoms. The dedication block now cracked in half brought up from the creek and placed behind the large yellow caution barrels. $6000 to anyone with info please come forward. After two weeks it remains, the vandals remain at large. Several other bridges over the dried up creek. Flowers wild flowers everywhere you look. Overwhelmingly yellow. A smattering of purple. A splash of white, a dash of red. Bees buzz butterflies investigate. The statue of Pan on the second hill sits high above a large fountain spurting out a steady stream of greenish water into the basin. Four lion heads grace the base. The spring-spray fountain for children eerily empty of splashing shrieking imps. Too hot for tiny tots? Only for bees and butterflies.