Island

Toronto Island, August, late Friday afternoon, sitting alone in a broad, empty park, annoyed with myself. I had rushed to the docks to get to Hanlan's Point and the beach but just missed the ferry and, refusing to wait or go home, took the one to Centre Island, all riddled with people and kids and smells.

So, make do. I found a secluded picnic bench in the park close to the bicycle path and the lake and brought out my notebook. I can always walk to Hanlan's later, strip, lie back and watch the sun set, take the late ferry home. . . .Four, five shirtless guys, cutest one with the sunglasses and red shaved hair leading, the lankier one next to him, and the pair at the back with t-shirts slung on their heads, the darkest guy in brown shorts hanging off his hips, showing his tan line, the top of his ass.

A woman in a lime cutoff pushing a baby carriage along the path, her hair sprouting out the back of her ball cap. Then she turns her head and looks at me, watching her, making notes.

A young family wheeling by in a tandem bike for four shaped like a buggy, the fat father leaning half out the side with his foot braced on the fender, wearing a white shirt open at the neck, slacks and a yarmulke; his boy looking back from the front basket, wearing the same; his wife, in a cotton dress and with long black hair shaped like a teardrop, resting her head on his shoulder.

A quartet of heavy women walking, pointing at sights and cawing, one of them in a lime cashmere jacket and blue pants. Then a family hooting and shrieking hurtling along in their tandem, the mother's sari ballooning as she pumps the pedals.

Some people are walking towards to me — but now they see I’m writing they’re angling away, I hope. Although I still hear — no wait: they’re gone. I wish that didn’t bother me. Now two little girls gibbering softly by the evergreens. Now more people. Three young skinny loud annoying — wait he’s cute in the middle — and the girls are strapping too. But they’re only walking by, absorbed in each other. A seagull lands, surveys and pecks at the grass. Another arrives and disturbs the first. A third cries and circles in. Now a guy shaped like a cube van, squeezed into a black tank top and with hairless legs and wearing flip flops, slapping past just behind me.

I must focus. Beside me, a large garden with trees, beds and tall bushes lined by a low fence, two ambling strips of bony wood strung up on pegs. Inside, a small pagoda all in cedar shingles, with round windows in two sizes arrayed whimsically and a walkway of thick wood beams coiled around it like an arm. Next to it a starling twisting and fluttering in the sand. Then it stands, burnished, head tousled into a crest, wings fanned behind like a cape, and parades in circles, the grains trailing down.

On the path, whole family peering at me from their tandem, small father and slender mother poised in front. Two cute women in tank tops and with ponytails riding upright on city bikes. A balding man swiveling his head this way. The sound of a plane. Three teenagers in white unbuttoned dress shirts pulled out of their slacks whizzing by on skateboards, Mormons with the afternoon off.

A pizza truck. Another family on a bike, noticing me writing.

What if one of them came and sat next to me? Peered in my notebook? Spoke? Then they would all come, all stepping off their bikes, the carriages veering onto the grass, the men rustling out of the bushes, the sunbathers shaking off the beach. What would I do? If they all stood around me, some tilting heads, some smiling, waiting. What would I say?

That I stayed.