Dry awakeness.

Felt like it was arriving right just as I was leaving class, a flash freeze this past week that interrupted a few days of warmth. When it does, the wet from the couple days of thaw before gets caught, still hanging in the air as it frosts on us. Everyone walking with their shoulders bunched, hurrying home to whatever luck awaits them there.

People were walking quickly. They were bustling to resist the cold, with a slight lean and eyes leading along the ground about ten feet before them--all except for this one standing on the bridge. He stood straight, and he was round and motionless with hands tucked in khaki pants. He stood standing on the bridge ahead of me, not noticing the traffic or passersby, but looking onto the cold river below and at the sunset over the park trees, away in the distance and looking like the bright fade of watercolour. There is a long hill that runs downward on my walk back home, and the whole time I walked it I could see this person standing there, through the lengths of minutes, looking out to the frigid water.

He was watching the group of geese and ducks who had remained the whole winter and had formed some kind of a fraternity. All day they were sitting there, it seemed, every time I walked past them to campus or with our boy on a leash. As I got closer, the whole picture looked better--the unmoving smear of pink and purple against grey sky, hanging over the bridge and the icy river flow. I was just about caught up to the onlooker. But in a flash, the birds all decided to up and fly off down the river and into the sun. He watched this too, then slowly turned and walked away.