Summer school

I tramped the streets of the strange town chanting phrases in an unfamiliar tongue for practice, twisted around the campus rehearsing presentations with words lacking the automatic grace of native speech. Beds of carmine petunias lifted their musk to the artificial dawn showers and unfamiliar eating places offered cozy corners. I came to know the idiosyncratic whims of neighborhood gardeners, gluttony of the local ducks, and the deep shade of the oaks and maples and even the pre-historic ginkgo, the rosy brick of old buildings with gargoyles spitting nothing in a July drought, and sidewalks laid and signed during the depression, now cracked, aslant, but still serviceable.

Some places, where few belong, offer easy inclusion, and so, this autumn, I return there for contrived errands with a sense of cheerful homecoming.