Walking the Late Night Winter Sidewalks

    The crisp air bites at the flesh of his face and neck as he steps from the porch step to the city sidewalk, the crunch of snow beneath his boots shattering the still of the night with gentleness.  He pulls a cigarette from the pack in his coat pocket and lights it, exhaling a purplish plume of smoke that is one with the steam of his breath.

    His journey tonight won't be a long one: to the gas station on the corner eight blocks away and back home; but as always he's waited until the hour has drawn late.  It's in such an hour, such a time, such a state of loneliness, that he is able to reflect on the small town and everything it has to offer his senses.
   
    Passing by the ball park beside his house he thinks back to the summer that seems like yesterday and at the same time a distant memory; a season of green grass glowing with the excitement of youth and dust clouding around the feet of the running ball player after hitting a line drive under the sizzling sun. 

    Presently, those days lay hidden beneath six inches of unblemished snow and ice, the whole park desolate with an air of melancholy hanging above it. 

    The large water filled dips in the gravel parking lot are iced over, creating mirrors that show no reflection other than the glum of the night and a faint, sparkling gleam from the street lights around the edges of the icecicle covered chainlink fence.
   
    He moves onward leaving the park behind and passes underneath branches hanging low with the weight of snow. Houses line either side of him, most of them quiet and dark with their inhabitants fast asleep beneath heavy blankets and deep dreams. 

    Here and there a house remains partially illuminated and the shadows of the people inside drift back and forth past the curtained windows.  In the far distance the sound of a train rumbling across the overpass above the Ohio River cuts the air with it's man made thunder.
 
    He crunches across the last snow covered block and tops the hill where the town levels out at a four way stop.  Seeing no cars approaching he slowly walks across the street towards the gas station, tossing his spent cigarette to the cinder and salt on the asphalt. 

    He blows onto his cupped hands as he enters the store where the woman behind the counter sips lazily from a cup of coffee.  He grabs a six pack of beer from the line of coolers in the back and sits it on the counter. 

    With no words except for the total of the purchase the woman puts the beer in a thin plastic bag and hands it to him.  He nods his head in parting and walks back into the cold of the night. 

    And there beneath the neon sign of the store, beneath the bleak and starless sky, in the quietness of the parking lot where a road-weary traveler is pumping gas into a dirty Oldsmobile, he sees the beauty that many remain blind to. 

    He sees the perfection of the nothingness all around him, the solitude and quietness filling his mind with endless and abstract peace.  He smiles, lights another cigarette, and with new fat snowflakes falling on his shoulders he heads homeward.