Wrought Iron

Ever since, as a little boy, I used my grandmother’s great iron gate, or one half of it, anyway, as a generous swing, travelling with it, inward and outward, I’ve been inordinately fond of wrought iron. We can see quite a lot of it, if we are attentive, but our eyes glide over the forms without notice. Once a long time ago—I was in Paris then for an extended weekend in my Army days with almost no money in my pockets—I remember walking, walking, walking the endless avenues of now this and now that arrondissement and looking at what seemed to me an infinite presence of iron work decorating every balcony and window sill. On a day like today, with the temperature suddenly as elevated as the humidity, so that my fingertips actually adhere to the black keys of this computer keyboard, I thought I would let a picture speak for me. And, Inshallah, as the Muslims say, in future I might present other finds of the same sort. Herewith a piece of fence from Jefferson Avenue in the little city of Grosse Pointe.