The Oxford Canals

This morning as the sun floated lazily on the Oxford Canal and I walked its edge, I saw only a few living creatures: a duck paddling with one foot as it dozed with its head tucked onto its shoulder, a fisherman staring into the reflection on the water, a soft white cat belonging to a houseboat, and some young bikers en route to something exciting. 

What is it about canals that attract? Why do people love Venice? Why did Californians construct a new world of canals in Venice Beach? Why do I love this walk in Oxford so much?

Flowers spill over the edges of dusty little beachfronts, incongruously laid before expensive brick homes in something-or-other-period architecture. Battered canoes, bright plastic rowboats, and the occasional kayak float tethered to the shores, though I've never once seen a person in one. Ducks seem to feel the territory is their own, barely shuffling out of the way when I walk by. 

Three steps down from the bridge on Charles Street and I am in another world, the sunny sleepy world of reflected flowers and weeping willows dipping their branches, a world ruled by half-conscious ducks. I like it here.