My Town

I love this painting.  It was painted about 150 years ago, but it is exactly how it looks to me now when I go for my nightly walk in summer.
   I feel at home with my town now.  Sometimes, like me, she is small and plain, sometimes clear, sunny, brilliant and  sometimes blustery, dirty and biting.
  I have a place here.  Memories of childish icy bare feet on wet asphalt.  First love in a yellow paddock of long swishy grass.  My best friend fastening my wedding dress in my mother's house.  Driving streets by rote to my father's raspy-breathed death.
   We interred my father's ashes today.  It was dark and low in my town today.