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63
In Transit
The summer heat stabs the skin with needles. The usually
assertive acacia tree, sky-gazing with its leafy symmetries,
looks resigned. A man’s hand glistens with sweat-beads as
he scrolls up and down on his tablet. A little boy dressed in
tennis clothes practices rotating-the-ball movements with
his racket.
“When will the bus come?” the boy says. “It will,” the father
says.
The boy rises on his toes, swipes the racket over his head
and with a swift swing cuts through the thick air. “Do you
like my serve?”
“Very much so, son.” The man takes away his hand and eyes
from the tablet, wipes the sweat trickling down his temples,
and feverishly returns to his device.
The boy makes interchangeable spinning and clipping
movements with his racket and starts singing:
“This land is
my land, this land is your land…. So I’m gonna let it shine, let
it shine, let it shine.”
“Daddy, do you like my music?”