Winter rhythms

In the winter the sun falls quickly. Not too late in the afternoon, from the street you can see the office lights blink in the gloom and the street lamps switch on as the darkness rises. As I move along the sidewalk, the lamps keep rhythm like a double bass, punctuating space and time predictably, ever beautiful in regularity. Peeking through the intervals are the lit windows. This of the Castle. That of the Capitol. Dorothy Height’s pink turreted building along Pennsylvania. Then the shops, hotels, and restaurants. Tall and narrow, short and wide, square and round are the windows. And the things that cast shadows – the trees, the bushes, the newspaper boxes and trash cans, the parking sign posts that annoy the eye and soul during the day, become trills and turns, accessories to the melody, that decorate the beat of time passing, blink-blink, click-click, whoosh-swoosh into the spring.