Wordless

Today, Sunday, I had the park pretty much to myself. The houses on my street as I walked to the park showed no lights except those faint, silent, inner room lights on, maybe night lights, but no bright rooms. I crossed Flint, quiet and deserted. I listened to the crunch of gravel on the track, the sparkle of frost on the leaves and pale yellow grass.

The temperature hovered somewhere in the 30s, about zero on the centigrade scale. To me it felt just cold. The breath of cold wind, the silent trees, the open swale, the hovering blue sky. Could I tell this cold from other colds? How frozen my thumbs felt; how numb my ears got. Yes, I could. Just like I can feel my joints and muscles and lungs. But I don't have words for them, or degrees, or images. Other pain, stiffness, shortness I can remember and so this day unfolds as yet another wordless day of feeling.

I did see one runner, a tall woman with white ear buds and a burgandy cotton shirt, dark pants and very needed ear warmers. I hadn't seen her before and I ignored her for the first round. She ran clockwise to my counterclockwise. The second time we passed I gave her a hand howdy and she said, "Hi." You never know about people. I make up my own stories about them. This one took time away from studies on a Sunday morning, or left someone sleeping, or acted on a resolution, or went out exploring, or needed some time alone, or fled in terror, or wanted to be seen in a stylish burgandy shirt. You never know. They approach and they leave without saying anything.

I do all the saying. And always to myself, but now with these words. "She's running too hard." "She likes the sun on her face." "She wouldn't fit in a small car." Whatever. The word stream starts, shaping the otherwise silent, unknown world of the park. The trees themselves--the large pecan grove, the willows, the firs, the elms, the honey locusts--all without labels except for what I provide. The bermuda, the crawling weeds, wet soughs, dips, vales, berms: all there for me to weave and name. Tick grass, goose weed, toad swamp, ant trough, sun slab, buffalo hump. The partial nature of nature: there but off to itself, quiet and wordless.

So what brings us all out to this park? Health, vanity, love, obsession? I have it to myself, even though I share it with others, this other runner in burgandy, here, okay, because she's house hunting and trying out the recreational possibilities of this neighborhood. I'd call that obsession.