RSS SPIRIT

"I want to rock down to Milwaukee Avenue. And then you'll take me higher."

Pink bulbous clouds careen diagonally overhead on a March twilight. Is it fall or spring? Inside storefronts keepers chat on phones while children and dogs stare forlornly out windows. A black puddle in the gutter ripples waves across its surface. I look up and wonder at the globes of rainbow light that magnificently surround ugly street lamps.

I hear myself sing: "I want to rock down to Milwaukee Avenue. And then you'll take me higher."

A good thought froths up as I walk over a squat steel bridge. Cars clang over it as I solve a problem and am thankful. Also a bit amazed. How can I just be walking along playing with things all distracted then there arrives suddenly a sharp, clear answer? Its rightness self-evident by the feeling it conjures.

I have walked down this street many times. This avenue ferries an odd lot assortment of sidewalkers. Sharpies, bag-carriers, excitables, youth packs and others requiring askance glances. The clouds above cast on us a last ditch pink from the waning sun. They are headed out of town on a southwest express wind. We pedestrians below are destined merely to meander around the neighborhood.

I hear myself sing: "I want to rock down to Milwaukee Avenue. And then you'll take me higher."

The wind can be brunted by placing heavy brick buildings at my shoulder. But at alleys and intersections I can only duck down against the gusts. Stores surround and disgorge and engorge ped-X-ers. It is the weekday crowd not wanting but needing something or other to fill a shelf or hold some papers.

On a sneaky side street I turn off. Milwaukee Avenue's glare, window scenes, cars and bipedal obstacles still ring in my skull. I know it is only another dirty slab of concrete. Its lights are noisy and crass. Its sounds aspire to no mellifluity. But when I watch a skittering dust devil spiral up plastic bags and loose newspaper, something refulges in me, a bright dancing clarity both undeniable and unendurable.

[photo credit: http://www.exposingmyself.net/]

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