At the corner of Westcombe and Longton, she sits in the front yard on a small wooden chair. She sits brilliantly in the cold sunshine. A slight woman dressed in long fuchsia cloth and wearing a small turban, she watches as I drive by. I wave. She turns her head slowly toward me, unmoved; unmoving.
I think about her as I run a number of errands. I’ve seen her walking slowly along the sidewalk, barely five feet tall; age undetermined. Her face is wide, brown and lined. She could be sixty or one hundred. I have heard her homeland is Nepal.
She stares out and up at the sky at lands I don’t see, feeling winds I don’t feel; seeing the sun at an angle I have never felt. Her face is stone; absorbing with a direct stare the range and depth of the mountains from whence she came. My face is fluid. I look around mountains, above mountains and beneath mountains; thinking of how I will traverse the heights.
On my way back I look for her again but she and her small wooden chair are gone. She has left the mountains, the wind and the waning cold spring sun and the shaggy front lawn. She has closed her door against the fishbowl which is suburbia…
690 Saint Paul 