When I got back home Sunday night I wrote the following summation and assembled the four photographs for display.
The Gates - Last Visit
February 25, Saturday morning the last weekend of
their existence. Early to the Park, the sun rises
clear over the East Side and falls in bright, cold
sheets through the pumpkin glow Gates, and then gauzy
clouds smudge the cheerful solar clarity into wan but
joyful melancholy.
Already the Gates begin to whisper “we were here once”
and in their passing moment they speak for all of us
who celebrate lives, loves, who’ve lost friends,
relatives, influences, shed joy, wept, felt defeated
but rose, who raised glasses and toasted success,
happiness, good fortune, the wonder of sight, the
oddity of loving another. And despite our inability to
understand or explain the vagaries of our lives, we
journey onward, sometimes gracefully, sometimes in
lurches and gusts, but mostly with an unyielding urge
to pass through yet another gate, though no assurance
of safety or reward attends our determined steps.
