Wednesday evening

Temperature plummeted today; summer has definitely receded. There is still a large crowd at the Lincoln Memorial. Two guys are running on the Mall and will probably linger there for a while. As a woman holds a boy’s hand walking across the 1st street, an old man passes by on the sidewalk, his body leaning, supposedly, homeward. The carousel in front of the Castle is at rest; under the streetlight, the horses appear to have a soft luster. From an ice cream truck come a stream of music notes; it is not a tune I grew up with yet sounds familiar, pleasing to the ear.