Portrait of the Woman by the Univeristet Building

Circa Spring, 2011

She had to be near 80.   That or the cigarettes had aged her. She sat, frail, and wrinkled, so delicate I thought a gust of wind might topple her. She was skin cells, an organic system, still alive, but just, wearing her years in the sun.

She sat, on the park bench below the statue, below the university house, sucking in her smoke deeply, with a slow deliberateness. 

She will finish it in 4 pulls at that rate...   
 And on the ground, all around her, pushing up, up, up, through the muddy earth which had lain buried and so dead through the winter and now felt pregnant just to look at, as though life below would burst from dormancy, the little blue flowers, fresh and clean, pure and new, wormed their way skywards...

All around those wrinkled feet whose tired carbons would doubtless soon be feeding another spring's flowers.