Waking up on the plaza

Some male voice, urgent, quiet, resonating like long single notes from a sax under the constant city hum, carries thru the dark to our inert forms bundled in sleeping bags and/or cardboard boxes, carrying the message from the police: get up. No more sleeping on the ground.

It is 4:30a.m.

Apparently it is illegal in Washington D.C. to actually sleep in a sleeping bag, tent, cardboard box, any structure anywhere on the ground. You can sleep on a chair.You can lay down on the ground but you can’t sleep.

There are no birds to wake up to. The noise of the city never cedes. It is very wet and cold, much like a San Francisco summer morn. Our sleeping bags and anything exposed to the nite air are dripping with dew.

The murmur of hundreds of folks stirring awake, as the cold increases in direct proportion to the darkness leaking out into dawn, leaks slowly over the plaza as the early sun illuminates the capitol.