The old man and his grandson sat amidst the tiny island of greenery in the middle of an urban landscape. The bank on which they sat, among oak trees and unnamed varieties of plants, bushes, and wildflowers sloped steeply down to a ten foot wide span of brown water that carried the city's residues off to the Florida aquifer at some far distant point. It was an island of green not unsullied by the intrusions of the adjacent urban scene. Across the creek, near the waters edge, a shopping cart lay on its side half-submerged like some sunken freighter in a bombed harbor. A black plastic bag lay half torn open on the opposite embankment, its detritus splayed down the embankment like a pearl necklace of garbage. Beer cans nestled among the bases of the bushes and stuck half out of the mud in places like monuments to consumption. Beneath the brown water, broken glass fragments sparkled their presence like pirate treasure. The child, of 12 years, extended his tree branch into the water and swirled it around to watch the reflections of the rising sun in the iridescent oil slick. The spreading, undulating colors fascinated him.
The old man seemed quiet today. His thoughts were of what might have been, but now a forgotten dream. Once the greenery stretched for many miles along this creek and there were hopes it would become a long park, open to all the people for recreation. But the dream had fallen by the wayside for more mundane interests. When the park was not built, few ever got to see the greenery, how beautiful it was, and how much in need of preservation. Eventually rising land prices and a need to supplement tax revenues made it financially attractive for the city to sell the greenspace piecemeal to developers. At first only a few small pieces were sold, but as the linear connected green disappeared the reason to maintain it went too. Now the ground on which the man and his grandson sat was all that remained, a tiny island of green in a sea of concrete.
As the sun moved from red to orange the quiet of the morning was broken by the sounds of SUV's in the parking lot behind the man and the boy. Their mis-tuned engines coughed and sputtered like sick animals waking from a bad sleep. Clouds of toxic gas wafted on the morning mist to the noses of the man and boy, as the owners revved the engines in a primordial display of territoriality. The boy wrinkled his nose. "Why did we have to come here today Grandad? It stinks here." He swirled his stick a little faster.
The old man sat up from his thoughts and offered an explanation. "Well son, this is the last piece of the Hogtown Greenway, I thought you just might want to see it before it was gone." He stared at the wooden stakes with the yellow plastic ribbons waving in the faint breeze. "Tomorrow they bring in the bulldozers and this will all be gone."
The boy looked up at the trees and bushes and swirled his stick a little faster and without looking at the old man's sad eyes said. "So?!"
A place unknown, is unused, unloved, forgotten.... ..........and lost.
Following winds, my friends,
Rob Wilt