From my desk I have a first-floor, two-window view of Clarke St.  Front windows, the porch and ten feet of scrappy lawn to the curbless two-lane road.  July.  People walk for exercise here.  Not many joggers, just ordinary folks out for a walk, all ages, dressed for exercise, shorts and T’s.  Retired couple, always side-by-side, in stride, never talking.  Young mothers pushing prams, trying to get back in virgin shape.  Stubborn solo widowers focused elsewhere.  Random neighbors being pulled by dogs.  The kids are usually on bikes.

I get to study walkers and have developed a sort of phrenology of ambulation—an ambuology?—by which to predict traits of character, position, even history.  One can intuit (imbue?) a lot about a person from how they walk.  That dude in the ranger hat, for instance, never played a sport.  Look how far apart that couple are, and she has not stopped talking.  The tall blonde girl is in training for something, crew maybe.  All the guys my age with backs bowed like mine by desk jobs.  Or take this grandma/new mother/baby in pram crew; there is a Bronte novel there—the things they have to pretend are secret. 

There are the younger ones, early on-set middle-age, with their handheld gadgets, communicating as they walk.  Out alone, walking and talking, sometimes with their thumbs.  They are not worth your attention, pre-robotic slaves.  They long to be like everybody else.  Besides, what walkers do with their arms free is telling: Loose or stiff? Shoulders engaged at all? Fingers clenched or splayed?   Suspect the ones who swing their arms in front of them.  The canine tenders, of course, have a leash in one hand and a dogshit bag in the other.  Here is the woman bent with osteoporosis, walking to her yoga class, her rolledup mat under arm.  You can tell that every step hurts.  

Clarke Street is part of a neighborhood.  These are my neighbors.  I have watched them pass often on fine days like this.  I note their dayglow footwear.  I feel I have a right to name them, to assign lives to them.  I even name their dogs.  There are some old injuries passing by, some tragic pasts, some futures worth avoiding, unkind life.  But if I wait and watch long enough, I am sure a perfect ten will glide by as if afloat on winglike legs, a Mona Lisa smile.