By Rich Youmans
We were there again today—the “regulars,” all in our favorite spots on the library steps. The redhead who always sat near the sidewalk with her bag of celery, scrolling through a phone in a pink case. Three steps above her, the muscled teenager in a sleeveless t-shirt, his face all hard angles as he pored over an open textbook. At the top of the steps, his back against a Roman column, the man with cropped gray hair who never brought a lunch. He wore a silk tie like mine but just sat with it loosened, looking far away.
barely a whisper
above city sirens
blue-sky moon
And someone new stepping out from the crowded sidewalk. His black raincoat absorbed the sun like a tar pit as he climbed the steps, his matted hair and beard the color of the pigeons shuffling to give him room. He stopped halfway up and sat a few feet from me. Another island among the many. He stared into the distance, over the boulevard’s stop-and-go, the vendors hawking baseball caps and lemonade and spiced gyros. Then, clasping his hands as if in a secret handshake, he began to sing—high i’s, deep e‘s, short o‘s and long, extended u‘s.
shortwave static
out of thin air
a forgotten voice
Everyone turned to look, but only for a moment. We had become familiar with the city and its ways, had learned never to stare too long. I turned back to my phone, scrolled through old texts—check-ins, invites to meet-ups I couldn’t remember, words collapsed to a few letters: BTW, LMK, BRB. The traffic pushed forward, the sidewalk crowd slowed and moved on through the sun-baked air, the vendors raised their voices as the vowels rose and dipped and soared and grew louder. I looked at him again, and his face had taken on a strange calm, as if his mouth were working on its own. He reminded me of a rogue monk, his prayer reduced to the unpronounceable. A tongue more felt than heard.
music of the spheres
the infinite variations
of silence
His eyes fixed straight ahead. I followed his gaze, wondering what might be compelling him. But there was only the skyline’s distant haze, the towers that appeared to touch the sky but never did. Looking out at them, I began to feel as if I were floating, unmoored. I pressed my hands against the concrete steps as the vowels kept coming, a tilt-a-whirl of sound. I concentrated on my breathing, now as ragged as his chant, and closed my eyes. When I opened them I was looking down—hovering over the steps, over the vendors, over the islands of lonely people and the hollows between them. I sought out the faces of the regulars, and for the first time really saw them. Freed from the phone’s screen, the green eyes of the redhead, wide and anxious and waiting. The teenager’s open mouth, the first hint of wonder before the textbook’s mysteries. The gray-haired man taking off his tie, the lines on his face easing. For the first time, I felt I knew them.
sunlight fractals
in each of us
the other
The vowels stopped. I was back on the steps, looking out at the same city, the haze and towers. My breathing began to calm, but something inside still reverberated like a tuning fork. I sensed a pair of black wings unfold next to me—the raincoat opening wide as he stood and walked down the library steps, disappeared into the sidewalk’s streaming crowd. The library clock struck the hour, and I went back to my cubicle, my daily life. But tonight, staring out my bedroom window at the night sky, I hear his vowels and I see them all, still. The teenager. The gray-haired man. The redhead. Tomorrow, I will sit on the bottom step. I will put down my phone and take off my tie. I will open my mouth. Then anything might happen.
full moon
my bloodstream’s
high C
Rich Youmans is the editor in chief of contemporary haibun online and co-author, with Roberta Beary and Lew Watts, of Haibun: A Writer’s Guide (Ad Hoc Fiction). He’s been writing and publishing haibun for nearly 30 years and still wonders where the time went.
MoonPark Review 