People on the Street

I live in a small town and frequent the downtown cafe's to do my writing. I see alot of the same people every day and have gotten to know some of them just by watching and sometimes talking to them. A woman who eats lunch at my currently favorite cafe moves very slowly. She dresses in bright scarfs and beaded jewelry. She reads the NYT and with a shaky hand pulls an oversized cup of hot cocoa to her mouth sometimes spilling it onto her batiked pants. Another woman I see is a poet who seems to spend the day wandering from cafe to cafe talking to herself as she goes. She also moves in slow motion on unsteady legs. She writes poems about the river that winds its way around our town. She rolls her own cigarettes. Her hair is matted and long. Whiskers sprout from her chin. "Sandy" pulls himself along the sidewalk and into the cafe with hand-held crutches. "I'm so tired," he told me one miserable rainy spring day. "I wish I could fly to a Caribean Island and just sit in the sun." He has Cerebral Palsy and has never been out of the state.