Place Essay

About the fabulous Arbuckle Acres...just the first paragraph of my essay :)

On a cold day, the brown-tinged muck of a river is silent, droopily reclining in a bed littered with glass and cigarettes and crawdads. The trees around my bench are forlorn and still, housing twittering birds and perhaps rabid squirrels gnawing away at acorns. Brown grass freckles the dirt, limply bent from little feet. My bench, however, is a throne. One of the only old ones left after the Parks Department decided to beautify Arbuckle Acres, my bench is spattered in blood-red paint. The sections that have been chipped away are deep brown, reliable, stained with age and rain. Pens, sharpies, pencils and knives have scratched away to my bench’s core, leaving remnants of teenage romances, remembrances of happier days when Sheila loved Tom and Sara loved Bobby. Spewed around the hearts are words that rebellious adolescents have etched on my bench while giggling and sneering, pointing out the deed to their impressed friends. Here and there droppings have landed on my red bulls-eye bench, and I carefully find a spot that is not littered with gifts from the birds. Securely bolted to a square cement foundation, I know my bench is going nowhere. Why would it be moved, anyway? The view is a picture. The trees are a fortress to my left and right, thick white oaks rooted deep. Below me winds the river that continues to exist despite decades of careless men who throw their beer cans into the copper water. Across the river stand leftovers of a once enormous forest, paved for foot trails and a neighborhood further back. Most days I see the marathon runners and the frustrated wives toting hyperactive children who are always several yards ahead, old couples who attempt to enjoy the scenery and one another, angsty pubescent boys and girls whose anxious faux-confident voices carry across the river to my bench, a lone walker with her dog, a tired man in a suit who needs a vacation. Above me the clouds loll against a smoky blue sky. I sit, listening to the voices of strangers and the scamper of rabid squirrels, feeling the chilled planks of my bench even with a coat on, tasting the copper water in the air, smelling the earthy greenness of the park. I sit, because this is my bench.