I wish you could be here. This morning's run takes me past Mr. K. sweeping Friday night into the gutter. Three addicts doing something conspiratorial between two parked cars, waiting for the methadone clinic to open. The genteel frenetics of the farmer's market, shoppers hopping and keen-eyed as ravens. Serious cyclists are out, packs of them and with their glossy gear they are hard shelled speeding beetles. Children and dogs are collapsing and colliding in the long meadow, a beagle tells his person he is not done smelling the air here yet, a pomeranian waltzes with a small boy.

There is a young woman running towards me. She has just out of bed hair and a loose gait, floppy at the wrists and ankles. She waves her hand and I think she is gesturing at me, but really her hand is following her head as she double triple checks before stepping across the street. I like to think she is beautiful to someone. Someone who is still drowsy in her bed, or noticing one of her stray reddish hairs on his own pillow, or making breakfast to conjure her return.

How embarassing. This is really what I would wish for myself. Instead, I am back on my own stoop, inspecting the progress of this spring's strawberries, unfolding the weekly local paper, giving the hairy eyeball to the young blood who bombs his ambulette the wrong way down this one-way street, and yes, of course, wishing you were here.