Old Hippie in love with Mother Nature.

Finding joy in a park.

I'm older now, walk with a limp and a cane. The world I grew up in no longer exists.  People live fast paced livies, chasing careers, utube videos or some fantasy family life. They have no time for an old women with 2 cats.

So I drink coffee in the AM, watching the sun rise and paint the horizon shades of orange and pink. I pet my cats and feed them. Listen to the day wake up. The sound of work trucks, in the distance, a low hum, that builds and grows to a steady rumble. 

I drive my car past a trailer park. I remember when it was a swamp. When my friends and I tried to save the turtles from the bulldozers and landfill. Now the swamp and turtles are gone.

I drive to the park a small strip of land, a few acres of marsh and trees. I breath in the sweet smell of wet dirt and watch the slash pines wave in the breeze. I meander over the dirt trail, thru cabbage palms and oak trees. A swamp maple spreads it's branches, inviting mockingbirds to build a nest. 

Slowly with cane and arthritis knees I stroll in deep into the park. I escape the hum of traffic, the smell of car exhaust. I sit on the sun warmed earth and run it thru my hands. I close my eyes and feel the gentle kiss of wind on my face. "Tap tap tap" of a woodpecker, searching for insects. A mockingbird loudly announces his desire for a mate. 

Up high in a blue cloudless sky, a black bird glides on warm air current. A squirrel chrips at me, begging for food. 

As I lay in the cradle of Mother Earth, I' m glad that they left a patch of soil uncovered by concrete and fast food restaurants. 

Reviews

[matthew scott harris]

i too share the laments of an aging body, and rue the suburban sprawl (also known as vinyl city) across swaths of land no longer farmland, but when my parents moved to route delivery #2 level road february 28th, 1968 the majority of landscape dotted with a country like feeling and even the one hundred acres (yet to be developed - so called progress) canadian geese used to acknowledge their presence by honking year after year until... only the sounds of honking horns from vehicles.

[Carrie]

Agreed which leaves the small strip of vacant land so precarious