Tan leaves hide green spiked bushes along paths where trees, once full, grow sparse amongst a lighter hue of gold and red. Wind picks up litter of carcasses grown light and dry and sends them flying in whirling eddies downward until, softened by rain, lying one atop another, they deaden the footstep on the path and gently fall apart, leaving a pungent perfume of decay. Until they are dust and cold is past, the beauty of old will not give way to new. This is the waiting time.

On 4th street Nirvana is a shop with an array of incongruous garb neighbored by the Adult Lingerie Fetish and a smoke shop featuring a great Hooka, Algerian tobacco, a silver cigarette pack pirouetting in a silver shell. I have had thoughts of Nirvana, not existing in the illusion of witches, or fetishes, or tobacco, but in the peace of a synthesis of understanding with someone else... what has been endured, what is to be faced. Isolation breached, the orange of a day glow neon sign, lights in the park at night floating through the trees, framed by dark clouds, laughter, are life, are Nirvana.

Orange neon signals "FULL", across the winter's gray to tint a silver train in the last luminous sky of oncoming night. In the dark journey, thought of dawn transforms the sculpted glow of highway lighted monoliths to flatter, whiter fields and crystals on a window pane. A traveler wakes restricted by dim interior, and wants to stretch a hand outside to touch a shining frozen leaf that beckons in the sunlight, but finds a pane of glass. Thus, must instead move forward until the shimmering fades, dimmed and evanescent in returning dark. Euphoria turns cold in the return. There besides the neon "FULL" the train stops to let the traveler off. The pause is long enough to stretch a hand toward the sky.

Light moves through a canopy of yellow over brown expanse. Leaves, gently floating, spinning silently, softly rain onto dirt. In a bed, nose pointed sharply upward, an old man lies, breaths punctuated by machine sounds. Eyes open a little, he mouths a few words and closes them. Life glides by, spinning silently into continued sleep until wakefulness will no longer bring the light of day. Now the leaves have passed the yellow hue and lie brown upon the barren ground in peaceful harmony with earth and destruction. There, lies the spirit of renewal. Earth to Earth Life to Life. In the bed the spirit passes into eternal sleep.

candlelight flickers in a glass, tracing contours in two anxious faces across a small table. Blown to one side and another the flame ignites the eyes, or mouths, leaning in and drawing back, from the void between them. Molded in the fire of the evening, Odysseus sets out in the morning on a perilous journey. He travels too far away from the evening’s light, and, seeming to be saved by Calyso, is kept lost instead on her island. The Gods decide what should be done with him. Hermes brings the order, “Send Odysseus home.” So, Penelope must wait until he finds the strength to put his raft in the water and brave the journey back. Shipwrecked, threatened by outcroppings and current, Odysseus swims to save his life, and, knowing the meaning of safety, prays to be taken on the current of an inland stream, whose course brings him to land at last. He sleeps the sleep of the dead. He is safe. But life stands before him. The light of the candle flickers, yet Penelope’s place is empty at the table. Racked by danger from suitors, she cannot come until he brings her back to the evening meal.

They sat together in a black and white movie, feeling the absence of touch from years of passion and separation, that had passed between them. From a window frame, lamplight glowed in soft, transparent iridescence, white lines along the edges, demarcation of the limit of night. In the movie’s twilight, he would not tolerate her kiss without anger. Screen light converged on an actress. For a moment, his hand moved over her abdomen on a summer afternoon long ago. Anxiety lay at rest in the warmth of their closeness and the rhythm of their breathing. His fingers grazed the thigh next to him with little taps, continuing in rhythm. For a moment, at a black and white movie, she wondered, and felt quieted by the thought.

On a late afternoon in 1969 I was walking down Myrtle Avenue with my husband to be. We were returning from the supermarket where I had counted out, carefully, every penny spent, marking the amount allowed to get through the week. The neighborhood was poor. Streets lined in row houses whose front steps hid garbage cans, while they mounted to scultured doorways of broken stone. We stopped to adjust our packages. A car full of young men swerved close to the sidewalk. An upper body topped with white face and dark hair pushed through the door window screaming Dirt. Dirty nigger wants white pussy and sped on. It was not the first time. In the classroom where I taught I was called "Whitey". In the subway station, where we took the train, Riders stared at us on the platform, commenting. But it all seemed small, The real struggle was going on in Alabama, or at Kent State where lives were on the line and the consequences suffered. At Columbia, students sat in and Abbie Hoffman became the spokesman for political injustice in an unwanted war. From prison, Eldridge Cleaver told the story of the ghetto where a man lived with his "Soul on Ice." So we did not tell our tale, and, in the Spring we were married in a Unitarian Church because the minister did not question us about race. Yet, now I realize that we were just as much part of the struggle as anything else that went on before or since.