Chilled

Dead of night lasts hours when the moon has waned to a thin crescent. Tonight, the dark was deepened by the clouds which filled the west. There was wind as well, and a chill which silenced the crickets early. For the moment, silence has fallen, and my open window brings a sinking air that is cold and damp, which I eagerly inhale. This is what the night air of early spring should be, and I have missed it in this uncommonly warm, dry season.

A while ago, a porch light was lit and illuminated the largest dogwood, making the blossoms look like frost. I tried to imagine that it was winter, but the fantasy failed. I hoped that the wind would blow the veils from my mind, but that too failed. It is that spring is to be a time of beginnings, and I am faced with endings. The incongruity has disrupted my thoughts and left me scrambling for metaphors. I suppose I'll simply have to wait for some future time of tranquility in which to order these recollected days. But at the moment, I can't imagine such a time.

Tree

Some guys showed up on the street this afternoon and began chopping branches from one of the ponderosas. They removed all but those on the top ten or twelve feet of the tree which is about seventy feet tall. It looks very odd with all its lower branches gone. The chipper into which they tossed the branches made an incredible racket. They stopped working at four o'clock. I suspect that they'll come back early tomorrow to finish destroying the tree, unless there is rain, which there might be.

The sky is full of cumulus clouds, and all the afternoon has been a play of light and shade, and cool, gusty breezes. The weather is perfect for spring. It makes me sad.

Evening.

My writing goes bad when I'm distraught. Since writing is merely thinking on paper (or whatever medium) that means that my thinking has gone bad. It has been eroded by a flood of feeling which my mind lacks the power to discipline. In danger of being swept away, I attempt to anchor myself.

I note the graceful shape of a particular mulberry branch my window frames, and how its end sweeps upward like the corner of a pagoda roof. I note how all the outstretched leaves along the dependent twigs of that branch bounce and wave at varied rates, though all are moved by the same gusts of breeze. I note how some of the white parts of the drifting clouds remain white, while others take on the yellow tinge of the declining sun, and how some of the shaded gray clouds now glow with the first hint of lavender sunset. I note how much closer the sky seems now that the pine across the street has been stripped of most of its branches, and how the tree with its long, bare, swaying trunk topped by a scant two dozen branches is oddly reminiscent of a tall palm tree.

Then a shifting of light brings to my attention the pane of glass through which this scene is revealed, and I note the dense row of tiny smudges which cross it at a certain height. They are the nose prints the cat left when sitting on the sill, watching the winter pass. The anchor has come loose, and my thoughts drift with the flood.

Sunset comes and goes. Although the evening has turned chilly, I am reluctant to close the windows. The air is fresh and bracing, the fading sky appropriately melancholy. But more, once the windows are closed and the drapes drawn, I know the house will seem even more lonely and oppressive. I hear the first cricket chirp, slowly, slowly, like a fading heartbeat.