Pom-Pom Man

Glimpses I caught between the swishing traffic on that sidewalk in cold rain and colder wind and a cast-off Cleveland Browns windbreaker: a man tottering a mime of an off-center grandfather clock, and, oh yes, in a dirty orange unrav'ling woolen cap with flopping pom-pom. Then he caught himself, a sudden vision in that plate glass, and froze as one struck, arms spread, splayed fingers for balance, gaping at himself and his wobbling pom-pom. And I too caught him, uncanny in the black glass beyond a CLOSED sign, among the white tablecloths. And then, my god, he started to dance. Well... Okay, more of a gaucherie than dancing. Shuffling, spread-legged tottering (he'd a clubfoot, I noticed) interspersed (and this is the point) with little leaps; but now without progressing as before (if progress is the right word for going nowhere) along the wet sidewalk. Minutes — or was it seconds? — he gaped and leapt and danced while busy folk eddied round him. Then a rain-beaded bus of limp-faced, stippled tourists stopped right there, and I lost him, the pom-pom man, who danced among the tables of the Café Boulevard. Well, it was for him, you see, a vision (for me a far feebler thing, a philosophy) grand as Milton, Dante, St. John the Divine, oh, even St. Simeon in the Temple. The ecstasy of an achieved leap ignores how high you rise (pace Nijinsky, Nureyev, Barishnykov). It's how low you started.