Midday temperatures stretching towards triple digits encourage visitors to dress lightly and arrive early at the local park where the Watcher,sits silently and scans for details that will reveal the nature of the day.
A thin man with hairy arms leads higgledy, piggledly fourteen short children down the path that leads to the pond where the ducks are waiting to be fed on a warm Monday morning that will be remembered by six-year-old minds as an end-of-school lunch eaten at splintered wood tables with paper bag sandwiches while brightly colored straws bend at crooked angles from waxy milk cartons as …
A young man, baseball hat pulled low, tokes on a smoke under a bright orange canopy and drives the giant lawnmower with whirling blades layered by green clippings across the field where a yellow lab stubbornly sits until the most insistent pulling on his leash and the most cajoling tones in his ears cause him to reluctantly rise while the dragonfly, as big as a hummingbird, hovers low, its green and purple body glistening in the sun’s rays, its eyes reflecting the image of the day as …
An old man with bowed shoulders carries a tackle box in his left hand, a rod in his right, and leaves behind the small stream that has delivered his lunch and is passed by two men strolling arm and arm, heads back and ears forward, one waving a white cane in small circles, the other following the subtle lead of the large German Shepherd that walking confidently in step as …
A stroller with two bonnets bobbing is pushed to the playground by a young mother with stringy hair who lifts out twin toddlers, then heavily sits at the picnic table, head on hand, watching them climb the monkey bars until a fallen child cries to be picked up but is instead bundled, with his brother, arms flailing, back into the stroller as …
The playing field holds the faint echoes of yesterday’s cheering crowds when two local teams swung at small white balls but now is covered by paper wrappers and empty cans but will soon be filled by disabled adults from the local center who one by one will tumble out of a long white van with happy cries of anticipation and head towards the dugout where volunteers are blowing up bright balloons and setting out picnic plates for lunch on this summer day.
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