The soldier’s khaki camouflage fails to hide him, the soldier’s wife can see him, and smiles at him, and shares the picnic lunch in the shade on a blanket of pink blossoms.
The clerk, loose tie, free from his terminal, now with pen and pad, studies “Just Enough Hungarian.”
The young Korean pulls thick skin from the orange, breaks the fruit, and hands a trio of slices to the old Korean sharing his bench.
The bureaucrats jog in pairs, another with palms and face on the sidewalk counts his push-ups out loud on the east side of Treasury, another using a bus stop shelter for a chin-up bar on the west side of Commerce, another dozen in touch football in the shadow of Washington’s Monument, pausing to regretfully learn the time from a passerby; there’s time for two more plays.
Voices from Eastern and Western Europe, dialects from Middle and Far East, accents from Central and South America, laughing chatter from Crestview Middle and Lakewood High students, all drift up, float around the bleached columns surrounding Jefferson, and out and over the blossoms and the basin.
(from District visit)