New Haven Independent

Object Lesson #25

by Stephen Kobasa | August 25, 2009 10:55 AM | Permalink

Leaf Memorials
Sidewalk and driveway, imprinted cement
Bradley Street between Lincoln and Orange Streets

Temptation has many pictures, but one of the most likely is a newly laid sidewalk. There is some small promise of immortality in stick gouged initials. Our daughters years ago left theirs at one corner of York and Broadway, invisible but permanent beneath a layer of brick. So, while looking up is the usual profitable perspective for a city walk, there are often things at one’s feet, too.

Thus these leaf memorials, a dozen or so, patterned, dimly, on the hardened surface. The intaglio is shallow enough that they may register or not depending on the gift of shadow. Noon sun makes them vanish. Mock fossils, fashioned out those real seashell remains in the limestone, they are grace notes in our path.

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