On the urban stretch of the tow path I walk by households that front onto the tow-path. I also walk past full benches, wandering drunks, and the occasional encampment or bouquet taped to a post. It's a sign of the times, simultaneously cruel and compassionate.
This sparse thorn hedge grows over a front where a jutting full-length window provides a corner of shelter. Someone took this as a bed for a while, destroying the old hedge, etc. After a while the situation was resolved, but it's still visible as a flattened space, and still somehow encampment identified.
Firethorn, nature's barbed wire, has been planted across the front. The river view is now glimpsed through a leafy barrier that gets heavier every year. But though the space behind the hedge is narrow, it still has the look of a place a person could sleep.
Until today, when these broken sunnies were jammed thoughtlessly into one of the supporting posts. Suddenly blank mirrored eyes stare back at me as I glance as the soft trap of a space beneath the hedge and unconsciously I straighten, avert my gaze and move along.
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