Steven Schroeder | one more turn of the wheel
“Trotsky!” scrawled in red on a gray wall along the path I walk in Chicago on the first day of March when the season has just begun to consider turning in spite of everything has me thinking of Richard Rorty’s wild orchids in New Jersey.
A mile further on, a young woman and a tiny child still learning to walk stop at every spring bulb breaking through the soil to make a joyful noise and do a little dance.
This reminds me it is Mardi Gras, and I laugh out loud when I turn the corner and see a circle of snowdrops blooming, response to the child’s call, a psalm emphatic as the fading memory of any old revolutionary considering one more turn in spite of everything.
And, still, learning to walk, in spite of everything, I dance a little.
Chicago
17 March 2022
