Winter in Ponsonby
Calla lily, Ponsonby July 2007
I walked through the backstreets of Ponsonby yesterday. It was my favourite time of day, just before sunset. It had rained earlier in the day, but a hesitant sun had come out at the last minute. The slanted light of winter afternoons is soft on the eyes, on the soul. There is a little cul de sac behind the sports fields of Ponsonby Intermediate School that I am particularly fond of. I am not sure why, it has nothing much going for it. Where it sits it gets little sun during the day, but the hours of the late afternoon is its time in the lime light. It is quiet, often I see nobody as I walk down the street. A couple of times a little boy has been playing by himself, trying to throw a ball through a homemade loop in a tree in the garden. The houses are modest and of no particular individual charm, yet the whole is very attractive. One of the last houses is littered with garden gnomes and ornaments and walking past it inevitably makes you smile. The street ends with a soft grassy mound and you exit through a narrow walkway to the right. I wonder what it is that makes some places seem more attractive than others. Sometimes I wonder if it is in the proportions. Or could it be something more elusive? The smell? A resonance with some buried memories? It certainly has little to do with the obvious eastetics, the opulence, or any other logical observation. It’s just an emotional response. A miracle.
The winter that never is, Ponsonby July 2007
