Anybody get stopped today dead in their tracks, amidst chaos and pain, by a rose longing to share its sweet smell for a moment?
In oversized shoes flopping long past their comfortable life expectancy, his sockless, poor, chafed feet were red as a rose. I noticed as I dug out of my pocket a smoke he requested at the threshold to the terminal doors.
“Can you spare two?” he boldly mumbled from beneath a shaggy beard I bet he’d love to feel shaven.
He was 5 years older and 50 pounds heavier than I.
Before I asked, he said more brightly, “I have a light,” accepted the smokes and shuffled unsteadily away, threads off every article he wore snapping in the gusts.
She was probably 10 or 11, also at the automatic door’s threshold, moving tentatively but without effort to get her roll-aboard out of the back seat while perhaps mom or an aunt with an anxious or frustrated scowl barked at the windshield to bounce her words toward an unseen driver. In contrast to the righteously stomping woman, the girl seemed calm though determined to get on her way across the drop-off lane, looking both ways, stepping lowly, moderately, modestly, smoothly, until…
She tripped slightly at the curb, as the woman strode ahead. The girl smiled at herself then skipped furtively through the door to catch up, I presume.
Yes, she stumbled ever so slightly, and was stilled, at a threshold. Yet in that moment, she delighted in herself. Like two old men in very different pairs of shoes exchanging common pleasures.
Redfoot saw the action too. And, yes, he had a light. I saw that, glistening in the corner of his left eye. No ashes nor smoke could drown the sweet fragrance of those moments.
.
Neil D. 2023-06-08
Feel with Neil 