dangling man, brick oven man

Walking home Tuesday I was startled by a very loud crack just as I turned the corner of Prospect onto 11th. A large tree branch suddenly snapped and dangled from a tree there, and I had to stop a while to try to figure out what was going on, but I couldn't find any reason for it. No wind, no pack of squirrels, not even one of our enormous grinning Windsor Terrace Cheshire cats. I intended to call 311 but got caught up in things at home and forgot about it. And of course, went back to intensive convalescing from this cold I still have.

In the morning I had the feeling there was something I forgot to do. I was ready to go to work but didn't feel I could leave yet. I considered what I still had to do, lying in bed some more seemed like it might be just the thing. After that it was sitting on the toy box while drooping against the window for a while. When I finally felt motivated to leave there was an orange nyc gov truck in front of the house with a wood chipper in tow. They were there to pick up a small bundle of trimmings from the pear tree the Rappas planted in the back of our house a generation of two ago. I helped him get the bundle whose leaves had turned black. The man seemed to find me something of a curiosity, he got a strange look on his face when I spoke to him, which was fine. It occurred to me to tell him about the broken limb and he said, OK, I'll go take care of it. I have to say, that was the most dream-like moment.

I went back into the house to get a jacket and when I passed by the man he was setting his gear out on the sidewalk, a large pinkish rope splayed out, and then the harness. Other things I didn't register. I wanted to stay and watch him climb the tree but had to get on my way.

A block away I noticed activity in a corner lot where there's a very old service station, crumbling under its new coat of paint, with diagonal wood detailing that strikes me as alpine. On a small sliver of land next to it someone grows tomatoes, peppers and okra, which has beautiful flowers and pods with gorgeous architecture. Whoever owns the lot also rents it out for parking but I've seen strange things there, like the tiny flea market they used to have, and once a large truck filled with enormous drums. Inside the odd compound I saw a man straddling a brick oven, smoothing darkish cement over the top. He said this was an oven he was making for a place called Lunetta on Smith St. I patted his tawny golden-eyed pitbull named Moses through the chain link fence, and asked the dog if he was going to lead me to freedom. I got a graze of warm muzzle for an answer.