March begins Autumn here; they reckon it before the equinox. Melbourne planes duly, shedding a moiety of their flapping hands already lie dry and thick enough for the idle toe-flicking ritual-recall of childhood rummages.
There is a fulsome, lazy innocence enough in park:- wedding party pix among the arbors, jazz guitarist quiet Django riffs; sleepers lie digesting lunchtime beers; two grown girls in dungarees, playing some kind of touchless chase, award broad shares of glee; Vietnamese mama with toddler dot wants snapping under horsed pomposity of po-faced Teddy 7th.
The muggy day proceeds in tram clangs, crossing-clacks, in well-tuned brake-keens, little bikes' preposterous half-pints bubbling quarts, skateboard clockle, and the rustle of those curling parchment leaves sneakers scuffle.
Sit on stone blocks drift back decades Cambridge days another garden city intersecting planes.
Pass laagers of cycles circled on Jesus Green - within them language-school clans, safely, moderately carousing.
But last time back there, alien shock: eastern tourist parties filter-masked as trekking Chinese, Indian or Saudi cities, performance theater of 'global pandemic' (London breached yearly safe limits in just five days) and Cambridge fails air-quality too (not so spectacularly).
Park plonked by arterial road, this 'relatively-clean air' city begins to scrape at my back, dry leaves in alveoli cavities.
All the pleasantries of these days must be paid for.
Scoop up small coins and drop them into wishing-wells of homelessness;
for among such memorable expressions of humanity, art and all marvels of civic inventiveness such obvious problems of air and poverty... and future water fall off the happy glut of the agenda.
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This is written 'Monet mode', en plein air.... but it got a bit choky. ;)
