Winter Walk
The sun enveloped the top corner of the first boarded up ward we passed on the campus of
a former state hospital, the denuding branches of Autumn's trees rooted deeply, old
on the campus of long ago mentally malaised lives, the trees reaching towards the sky...
A parking lot with weeds growing through its cracks lay before a locked door with angel
wings drawn on it--an adult angels's pair, and a child angel's--
the clinician, walking with this group, had taken a photo of the Angel wings drawn on
the door, and later as I observed a fat, well-shaped squirrel perched on its hunches at the
very bottom of a tree, eating a nut, the clinician notices the pink leaves of small,
slender trees intermixt in a straight line amongst the taller yellow and red and orange
leafed trees, within which the squirrel sat
having his dinner amongst the spirits of the
former patients.The vast, cloudy late afternoon sky hovered over the field at the
bottom of the hill upon which we and the trees and the boarded up buildings of this former
state hospital stood, the fading sunlight soon to turn the day into a cold, Autumn evening...
A photo tucked into the pocket of a door
with Angel wings, locked forever.
Copyright © Jennifer Cahill | Year Posted 2025
|