What have I missed, what have I missed.

A thousand million thoughts, even in a single day, carried on the blood.


So I went out for a walk, heeding the advice given to Type O people, aerobic exercise.  I'm weary, still feeling the wear and tear from the week.  Evening rush hour traffic along the avenue, headlamps, taillights, noise, the Cameroon Embassy receiving finishing polish after a long vacancy and long construction period, past the Irish Patriot statue, Chinese diplomat staff walking up alongside, I take the quiet route, up 24th Street, which has a nice dark quietness to it, angling away from Mass. Ave. into the finer homes of Kalorama, then up the hill, past Tracy Place, past the corner garden, up past the Sultanate of Oman, unprepared to see a Halloween skeleton hanging from its flagpole, a little much I think, then to the road that goes past the New England sea captain house, down past Ivanka's house, then down to the EU Embassy and the road block, then the mighty tree and the mosque lit for evening prayer.  I am walking slowly.  I hate to walk past any house of religious or spiritual service or house of prayer, but I am out following doctor's orders, and off over the bridge, crossing it, then down onto a patch of grass that drops down into the park's woodlands along the streams.  Ten yards away from the street, a safe feeling, the road's jumble hushed and forgotten behind me as I walk on grass.

In the darkness to my right, above the drop off down to the creek flats, in a sort of clearing beneath the edge of the rising forest, a lone deer, lying down in the tall grasses, her head up, looking at me, ears picking up the broadcast, motionless.  But not for the light color of her face I might not have noticed her.  I stop, and sit down, and she remains there, looking at me, still.  Hello.  I sit there a few minutes, and then I carefully rise and go about my walk.  Down the hill, and onto the sidewalk, then crossing the street before I shall turn around and head back.  There is a Washington party in a grand house with a big picture window revealing an oil painting, and the party is just breaking up, an elderly couple waiting for the Uber, a black Camry, the old lady, hunched over with a cane, announces to her gentleman.

The street rises to the corner, large mansions now, behind fences, and then down into the woods below Woodlawn Terrace, a street closed off for construction.  I've made it further than I might have expected, and now it's time to head back.  I used to bike a lot down here on my road bike, even at night with my flashing lights and headlamp, taking the steep hills ion repeat under the street lamps, not much traffic down here.   Up I come, quietly up the long meadow by the tree line, here and there a good sized stand of trees where the lawn is mowed.

The deer is still in her spot, just as I left her.  Facing to the side, up the slight slope, I sit down on the grass.  I whistle the theme from High Noon, Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling, to her and she remains still.  Then I give her a little Ode to Joy.  A man I see in the woods as I go to work, on the other side of the great avenue, who had never said a word or acknowledged me in anyway, hat and gloves, shorts in the cool weather, once responded to a benign comment that there was a deer who did not mind if you sang to her, close, not far from the path, and I took that to heart.

I lie back on the grass, looking up at a milky sky, and even with the sound of the rush hour and the road, oddly I smell the earth in a way I have not upon my evening walk seeing how far humanity has come and how still there are the woods and the sounds of the night, the call of the bat, a distant owl.  And when I rise, I get up slowly, nodding to the lone deer.  And I walk away, back toward my life, and the avenue and the light from headlamps approaching me.  Before the sidewalk, I turn back.  The deer has come out, stepping slowly, and she bows her head, to sniff the earth where I lay.  And I wish I'd brought an apple or something to offer her, next time.  I stand watching her, and she raises her head to scratch her flank with her nuzzle.  I walk down a few steps toward her, then stop.  She tiptoes slowly back to her bedding place, having to point her legs to accomplish the necessary gangly motions, curling back down.

The full moon has come out low in the sky as I walk back along the high bridge, poking up from behind the damp curtain of cloud.  I walk back to the quiet street.