During the usual wait for the first of several traffic lights to change my way one morning I noticed a lackadaisical fellow loping along at his own westward pace – a very slow pace considering the cold and his lack of coat, but one with a purpose slightly skewed from those more often adhered to during a rush hour in February. He was playing a slide flute and, by the way that he walked, whistling with it an uncommonly slow march. Could not hear it over the music I had blasting behind my rolled-tight windows, but though the beat seemed more of a dirge, the pleased expression on his hairy unkempt face sang otherwise. His big blue eyes saw warmth and joy, somewhere, and he did not care how long the journey, or how cold the morning light
Several long blocks westward I came to another light and stopped, about to look back in my side view mirror to see if the sliding flautist still marched my way, when another marcher came to view a block or so ahead. Another marcher, yes, but one driven eastward by different beats and a definite purpose, of places to be, dressed neatly, sharply, in brown camouflage fatigues. Despite his well-defined manner, his location and neighborhood made it more likely he was home on leave and keeping fit, adhering to his own daily rush hour of regimen.
My light changed and, before I reached the next one, I thought about what would happen when the joyful jaunt of my first marcher crossed paths with that of the second.
A few days later I sat at the light, going home from work: Pony-tailed runner with wrap-around sideburns jogged a pretty fast pace westward down the street, head back, eyes in a half-squint into the sun. He wore red white and blue sweats. Ahead of him another guy -- with a flute, a regular silver flute. His hair was also long, (but loose) and he wore a long-sleeve crazy paisley printed dress-shirt and jeans, hiking boots, clomping along as he too ran into the sun. His pace kept him -ahead- of the sweat-suit runner and he blew his flute the whole time. I rolled down my window, to see what I could hear as they passed me by. It sounded not so much like a song; could make out only two notes up and down the scale, up and down, up and down, up and down and he continued to run, to keep ahead of the sweat suit. Up and down, up and down, then ahead of me, red turned to green and I lost my sight of them in my mirror, in the dusk.
