31 May

Refreshed or flinching into the mid-afternoon rain this is the choice of right now. Hunched while waiting I am reminded to stand upright, to remove my misting glasses, my damp leather shoes, open my chest and breathe into this ponderous dank odour, these re-infused leaves, these sweet perfumes. Toes rehydrating within the green and the softening transformation of sun drenched cracks. Wetness is earthed and electric.
As rain jumps upwards from this steaming manmade lake of Tetley tea, as my shirt darkens to mimic the flag stones, wooden benches silently sponge and seagulls swirl upon speeding wafts of invisible uppermost, weathering most, while at my side black shining ferns offer brushes of jazz percussion as they wrestle the drops to a smooth flow towards softer drips of reformation with the soil below. Children laugh, as I imagine their fights and falls into the sporadic backdrop of insistent sirens and the sedate melancholia of woodpigeon ponderings upon an a spindle of branch within this tree lined city centre refuge.
And now, I smile as beyond this rain, within and through this misting walkway a familiar if sunken torso appears. I replace my heal within my shoe. First the left, and then tottering slightly the right.
‘You ok?’ he asks
‘Yes great, you?’
And so to warmth of the hermetically sealed room and to my next jumper wearing, rain denying client. And so to the dance, the anticipatory anxiety relaxed by recounting of moments passed, relationship restored upon souls rehydrated within the connection of another 50 minute hour.