from The Philadelphia Inquirer, Commentary Section

By Lauren Rile Smith

December 31, 2001

Ribbon is cut, accolades flow as Kimmel Center opens to public

The girl hugs herself; the wind goes through her. Twenty feet away
a boy peels an orange and eats it slowly. The light changes
and a torrent of women in candy-colored
exercise clothing cross the street. The poles are strung
with power snowflakes. On this corner a man asks her
for eighty cents. His eyes narrow at her boots,
her yellow jacket.

She wants to run into the street,
or scream, or start to sing, softly at first but rising in volume.
She tries it: Kindeskind werden deine werke preisen -- The sound
is swallowed by the rush of cars, passing cellphones ringing
hallelujahs,
construction workers shouting across the intersection. She looks up,
instead, and points, moving lips soundlessly
at the glassy facets of the sky, and a bevy of tourists
from Punxsutawney shield their eyes and tilt, as a group,
bobbing like ducks after bread thrown by schoolchildren
on a silver wintry morning by the Wissahickon.

Lauren Rile Smith is in the Young Scholars Program at the University of Pennsylvania and in the Temple University Music Prep Children's Choir.