Central Park. The genius of Olmstead and Vaux's landscaped naturalness, an oasis of primordial power amid the world's greatest concrete canyon. Its majesty and magic beckons city dwellers, even on
“the darkest evening of the year”
when the city is being socked by a monstrous mixture of wet, heavy snow, sleet ice, rain, wind.
No equine is present in this tableau to give a harness bell a shake,
But there is some sense of cosmic mistake.
“The woods are lovely, dark and deep.”
That is our park, especially with the fairy land decoration of snow amidst its arboreal splendor of 80-foot high American elms trees.
“But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.”
Robert Frost captured for the ages a man’s pause, hinting at the weariness of life and evoking a moment of ambivalence about the point of going on.
The man who was killed today in Central Park when a 100-pound branch fell and struck him directly had no such moment. He was walking through the woods on a snowy evening, and then he was dead.
If this tragic scene wasn’t poignant enough, he was walking on the Mall, through the Literary Walk stretch, where Shakespeare, Sir Walter Scott, Robert Burns, Friedrich Schiller and others stood helpless witness to his death.
A mighty tree branch, falling under the weight of snow and hitting one individual: you can almost see Death himself leaning on a power saw at the base of the tree, pulling his dark robes tighter around him as the sleet starts bouncing off his bones.
May this gentleman, at this writing not yet named, find peace in eternal rest, as surprised as he will be to be approaching the Pearly Gates.
“How strange, I was just walking through the Park on my way home . . . “
I hope St. Peter gently fills him in on the details.
2 comments:
Lovely!
M.A.
That was beautiful.
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