"Fine, clear, dazzling morning, the sun an hour high, the air just tart enough." Whitman, from Specimen Days










9/4

Jenifer Street

Green of river willows lush yet in September along the Yahara and Jenifer street from the days' long rain, the morning dews, fogs, hails and menacing thunders of the late summer nights, deep in shade and dripping wet along the iron porch railings and spiral ivy. At any brief glance down the side streets of Baldwin and Patterson, Ingersoll and Brearly, those grand blotches of iron gray water off Lake Monona send out signals of hope for the day adventurer; mothers still zip their children into small raincoats and onto the large wheeled strollers for runs they go; the old gardeners stoop over the wet canopies of tiger lily and late bloom orchid where underneath in their own small worlds the chipmunks slink back under cracked porches to hide stores of sour nuts.  Quiet, quiet is the solemn rainy day, quiet is the emerald gloom which haunts the back alleys but that must hide somewhere under the back bushes for the coming of the golden queen of the skies soon.