Spring is like a perhaps hand*

So after I wrote that last post, I took myself outside (then back in again to get my trench because it got a lot colder all of a sudden) and walked south, doing pretty much the same route I took my first day in Paris.

And I felt less blue.

I battled my way through the tourists at Notre Dame and into the Latin Quarter, which I do not know like the back of my hand, but at least I can take unplanned turns onto unknown streets and still know roughly where I am.  And that's when I did a bad, bad thing.  Well, not really.  It's actually a very good thing.  Let's just say that it figures that I finally find a reasonably-priced silk scarf store, which I have been trying to find all month, on my last day in Paris.  Fortunately, it was open (May Day is also Labour Day, but lots of stores were open today).

Nothing like retail therapy, I guess.

I wandered around, avoiding book stores because that way lies evil and heavy things and Ladurée because that way likes yummy and fattening things, and finally found myself at the south end of Notre Dame.

"Huh, you can hardly see it through that tree.  At the beginning of the month, you could see right through it."

Which reminded me that I'd promised myself that I would go back and see the Jardin des Plantes at the end of the month to see how it had changed.  And it had.  All the leaves have come out, and the gardens are full of flowers.  And I felt even better.  I came across a boules tournament in the Arène de Lutece; tourists with their maps; kids playing in the banned-in-Toronto playgrounds; fashionistas navigating the cobblestones with their stilettos.  There was joy.  And I felt it.

I still wish I were staying, because I love it here, but I know I'll be back.    I am starting to look forward to the next part of the trip again.  And I won't be melancholy tonight, which is a good way to be for my last night in Paris.

And, let's be honest.  My last feeling of Paris will be the mad panic as I rush for the door so I won't be late for the train.

*

Spring is like a perhaps hand 
(which comes carefully 
out of Nowhere)arranging 
a window,into which people look(while 
people stare
arranging and changing placing 
carefully there a strange 
thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps 
Hand in a window 
(carefully to 
and fro moving New and 
Old things,while 
people stare carefully 
moving a perhaps 
fraction of flower here placing 
an inch of air there)and

without breaking anything.

-- e. e. cummings