Fog and Coffee Urns

The work crew stood idly, all five dressed identically: neon orange vests with yellow striping, hardhats, jeans, heavy leather boots. They faced and stared in several different directions, their conversations appearing to be of little significance or interest. They were waiting for something--7:30?--and their motivations seemed as suppressed as the morning's energy was by the heavy fog. The fog hung like a heavy blanket, undented by the sun which rose invisibly behind it, enshrouded. Few were working today, a Friday one day after New Year's, and the work crew's lethargy perfectly reflected the spirit, or non-spirit, of the day.

The half-empty train arrived, riders listlessly disembarking with none of the eagerness and tension of an ordinary day. He walked just ahead of me, one hand clenched into a fist, holding something I couldn't quite identify. It was silvery, possibly metallic, possibly the foil of a candy wrapper. He was apparently being the good citizen, on the ready for the first trashbin. The Amtrak train on the opposite side had just begun to be unloaded, but the only items on the platform thus far were several black plastic crates, like the ones milk is delivered in, each one carrying a coffee urn. I automatically thought of the old rituals of fellowship hour, right after church, so long ago. A long-distance train full of maddeningly polite Lutherans, sipping scalding black coffee from styrofoam cups, was more than I cared to envision at that moment.

The pigeons and seagulls hungrily attack the food piled up for them at the edges of sidewalk, so aggressively that one might forget they were already the best-fed scavengers in the entire city.