JOHN THOMPSON
Benediction
As
he comes into view-as we fetch him into view-he looks small
indeed from our superior position in space and in time. Under the
patiently shedding maples, the solitary little villain trudges eastward along
the south sidewalk of simple straight empty asphalt Logan Street. Not an
aproned housewife, not a delivery man nor the blue mail carrier is any–
where to be seen. The very dogs of the neighborhood have taken the
afternoon off.
Each from its squared site in the exact middle of its own shrub–
bedecked and bushy plot, in formation of facing ranks north side and
south all the block long, all the four blocks long, the homes present them–
selves stoutly, unblinking, shoulder to shoulder. Each is brick-chirnneyed,
well-roofed, strongly-porched, appropriately bow-windowed or bayed.
Fortress-proud, each stands in full readiness to shelter its family come
what may.
Early October, the sun is still high and warm. The boy is topped off
with the tassel of his beanie. For blazon his wool sweater sable displays
chevrons indented in azure. The elastic bands of his corduroy knickers and
knee socks have slackened down his calves. His high black tennis shoes
with white laces scuff through maroon, brown, red, yellow leaves. That is
the only sound. His breeches, washed limp, no longer whistle.
Earlier, for we enjoy the freedom of whatever time or space may be,
earlier he and his companion rascals dawdled their way to school plunging
and tumbling in billows of the raked windrows, chirping; dust of the mor–
tal husks teased their nostrils and throats. Later, we know, in the evening,
rings of flamelet quick as a pool's ripple from a thrown stone will ignite
these heaps into Vesuvian bonfires, there in those free and far-off times
innocent of air pollution. To many of us, autumn will always be those first
chilled evening airs, more poignant than any trailing perfume of blossoms
in its opposite equinox, heady as the fumes of fat Cuban cigars, hazy, sere,
thick, permeating like banks of fog the atmospheric dome of our mid–
western maple towns, impregnating our jackets, scarves, and caps, but
sweet, sweet as the syrup expressed from these trees, and deciduous, all
gone to earth, worlds of wanwood, ashes to ashes. Only the sacrificed spir–
it remains, expired and drifting, pervasive as grief, smoke. At festival's end
the crematory embers may yield a few charred blistering potatoes or chest-
