I’ve been for a walk

On a winters day

Sometimes, when I ask my sweetheart to go for a walk with me, he doesn’t come. One problem he has with my walks is that I often go the same way, over and over. He needs to see new things, he says. But I could walk around the same block every day for a year and notice something different and delightful each time. I guess it just doesn’t take much for me, sometimes. For example, on a recent walk on a cold day, I saw the sky turn lemon yellow at the horizon. I saw a two-tone bird, gray breast and black feathers, hopping in a stream where the ice had melted. Hopping, and then running quickly, like sandpipers that run along the seashore. I saw an airplane’s oblique path and as I watched it I saw the lights go on underneath the belly of the plane. I saw the clouds turn smoke colored and then cotton candy pink.