Kathryn Nicolai

It felt good to walk fast and feel the warm air skimming over my skin.

I looked into front yards as I passed, noticing different flowers and ground cover and leafy green perennials.

There was an old house on a corner just by the park.

that had giant stone planters on either side of the front walkway.

And I stopped a moment to appreciate the elephant ears growing on long, slim stems.

Their leaves were arrow-shaped and soft.

with bright veins.

And I knew by the end of the summer they would look impossibly big.

I looked forward to watching them grow on my walks.

I circled past the pond and around to a sunken space.

shaped like a clamshell with built-in benches and a stage covered with a canopy of thin wooden slats laced over by a climbing vine.

The band was already playing.

A four-piece jazz band

with drums, a stand-up bass, piano, and horn.

The benches around me were filling up with a combination of families and couples and people like me.

who came on purpose to listen, and others who had, by happy accident, heard the music on their way out of work and walked over to enjoy.

I leaned my back against the cool stone of the bench behind me

and closed my eyes to listen.

The music followed a few familiar paths that I recognized from the old jazz records I'd been listening to since I was a child.

Then they veered off into unfamiliar patterns,