when I pass this

This is what I pass on my way to work each morning. A walk with leaves and branches and sometimes warm, dark air, and this is what I pass each day. How am I supposed to feel about this? How am I supposed to feel when I pass this?





A woman with food on her face--a refugee from Russia, I think--made a foolish little book in which she wrote, "Perhaps my tears make the desert bloom, although I don't perceive it."

Yes, I am willing to consider that perhaps they do. Perhaps her tears really do make the desert bloom. But what, then, blooms when this weeps?

-Todd Madigan