Green and Golden Days

To the park this morning, an unexpected autumnal heat wave. The misty morning sun shining on bedraggled dahlias, roses in the rose garden blooming for the third time this year, still massed ranks of pink, cerise, blood red and cream blossoms. The two bearded men who have made the rose garden home these past three years were sitting companiably under the arbour eating an early morning breakfast. Their beards are waist length now and their faces tanned and leathery. Whenever I see them I wonder what their story is, how come they ended up in the rose garden, but I feel shy, it's like walking into someone's house uninvited, sitting on the sofa and demanding conversation. They're not the only people who live in the rose garden. A young black woman, too young to be in such dire straits, also sits on a bench there sometimes, reading one of the free newspapers and avoiding all eye contact. I guess the gardeners must know they've made the rose garden their home, and leave them alone, but I wonder what it's like, in the long watches of the night listening to the foxes and owls and sirens of inner London. Not to mention the drunks, the hustlers and any number of lovers. During one summer, there was a woman pushing a big luggage trolley from Euston piled high with her suitcases, but she's moved on, I haven't seen her for years.
The men had moved from their usual bench on the left of the circular rose beds  and moved to the right side. Was this their winter quarters? In the warm morning sun one of the men had spread out  a blanket and lay face up to the sunshine drinking in the warm rays.
Perhaps it is they who pity us, as we hurry through the arbours jogging, power walking moving on to the next thing, while they bask in the perfume of sublime roses on a sunny autumn morning.