trombone

I went down to the square to catch some sun. I had been sitting on the couch reading stories and eating toffees all day, though both toffees and stories were those I had made myself. It’s so warm! Warmer than it’s been in five long months. I found a bench and sat down to wipe my beer with disinfectant.

As I was slowly reading a book of intense spiritual yearning and turning its pages splattered by shadows in the sun and sipping my green glass beer, high above our heads the church bells started to toll. For you. A man who likely hasn’t the luxury of sheltering at home came by to ask diffidently was I in need of the empty bottle or can he have it. He took it. The bells tolled on and on. Across the square a girl with her head knotted in blonde dreads raised suddenly her right arm holding a crutch and stabbed it upright at the sky as though leading all of us into battle. She let the crutch fall in a long arc slowed by its own light weight, it fell to the ground and she staggered forward on one remaining crutch towards her friend, standing and applauding. The bells died away like tide. And up on the uppermost balcony facing the square a man had started to play the saxophone. He played and we all sat and listened. On the opposite side of the playground a girl leaned her head in and bowed forward and she began to sing, hurling uneven phrases back up at him and starting up a patter with her syncopated clap. Three black women strolled past me talking very quietly and walking very slowly. A child cried out, Mama! Mama! The crutchless girl sank among the rose bushes and tugged at her raggedy hair. It’s nearly twenty degrees today, I turned a page in my book and read, “Miracles are not contrary to nature but only contrary to what we know about nature.” St Augustine. The trumpet player ended on a remarkable languid flourish and I started up a clap and stomp which half a dozen people joined in with, and as our sound died away the sun was gone between the buildings which hasten the sundown in this hemisphere, where the sun’s arc is so shallow half the year, the air was immediately chill and somewhere nearby a trombone started playing, slowly and with seeming sarcasm, ‘Summertime.’

This is the twenty-eighth day of my solitude and here ends the reading, I will go back to my desk to write, now.