KELPIES SKELPED

Went for a walk by the Kelpies, and got totally lost coming back! They've been built since I was in America, and they've put down a lot of new routes and canal paths and roads and such over that way. I decided to walk down the canal. Such a strange feeling, knowing I was within a square mile or two of the area I grew up in but it was all mysterious and alien and new and vibrant, bad day energy melting easily away with newfound awe of my surroundings, neon green trees and perfect-density foliage and canal flowerbeds, birds majestically swooping and circling, could-be Amazon jungle sudden giddy vertiginous bends in the path taking your breath away with never-seen-before gorgeous Scottish views, wee yappy dogwalkers and cyclists and motorbikers and kid-exercisers and photo-snappers, please give me this-way-that-way directions I'm lost, the odd where-the-hell? supermarket cart lying in the water, sun lazily humming and beating out a rare Celtic staccato rhythm in the beaming sun-cracking-the-stones afternoon, insects buzzing whispering larval survival secrets. an unseen-since-childhood tire swing and Tarzie I wished I could go on, chalk hearts caressing the pavement, Kelpies lurking huge and infinite and Sphinx-patient in the background, the new centuries on their just-born sliver sunlight-reflecting blindsides, barges bobbing in the canal, languid waterways lives, wooden bridges crisscrossing the water at any amount of enabling places, girls in short shorts eating ice cream, kissing couples, fitty-playing shouting topless young guys, Asian tourist videomaking families, hot dog guzzlers, new-cut-grass all-natural-high tangs wafting through the spellbound summer-coming Scottish air, shady obscuring Hobbit-aesthetic flower-flanked underpasses, a tiny ramshackle boat dock built by a canalside-dweller like something out of an urban Apocalypse Now only with no riverboat or Willard to be seen, woof-woofing dogs canal-splashing and spraying rainbow-refracting giddy water arcs everywhere with crazy canine grins, laughing stepping-back teeshirt-and-shorts-clad female owners, tennis balls with their launchers, a fine Falkirk spread, beautyfuel as anything anywhere in the known or unknown world.