“Walking to School”

“Walking to school amounted to putting my inner silence in motion. The silence was preserved, though the feet constantly moved forward. I sauntered while the other kids on the block hurried. I watched the twig being carried, like a helpless swimmer, along the rivulet of racing water at the bottom of the curb, the strings of spongy black tar that separated the cement rectangles of the sidewalk, the back-bent, lavender-hued star blossoms of the tiny hydrangeas, and the delicate, yellowish-green leafy shawl born by the neighbor’s Norway maple. The world unfolded before me as though it were a giant box of precious gemstones of every imaginable color and shape. The breeze against my cheek felt like the loving caress I had never before enjoyed. The still-shy sun, trying its best to break out of the permanence of gray cloud cover that was the Ohio sky, seemed to wink happily at me. The raucous garrulity of the other boys, walking ahead of me at some distance, blurred into a white noise, sufficiently incomprehensible not to disturb my tranquility.”