Sunday, Monday, Sunday, Monday, Sunday, Monday....

Oh, midnight is gone. Exhaustion put me to sleep and the late night of the day ended and I woke to the early night of another day. The air I've woken to is damp and still and quiet. It's as though I woke to have a dream I missed by sleeping through it. Where the sky is I find darkness, but it catches the faint reflection of towns full of light beyond the forest, and as I watch the darkness glows, as though a dark sun had risen and spread form across formlessness. A roof over the world is everywhere.

Sunday afternoon the roof was there and full of fluid detail as the drifting, translucent clouds revealed the hidden sun of light in its works. I was crossing a parking lot to a store when a fine sprinkle or heavy mist began, and I felt the sudden, cold drops on my face. A diesel powered SUV drove by, and had I closed my eyes I might have pictured myself in Los Angeles some decades ago, walking along some busy street and finding myself suddenly alone with a timeless mist carried through an air faintly scented with diesel exhaust, as it so often was.

But had I closed my eyes today I might have been run down by some local cowboy or senile delinquent as bemused by the mist as I was. Those decades ago are gone, though the atmosphere changes little, and I can imagine mists centuries from now falling there or here without me to feel them, and I know it will make no difference to the mists. They fell centuries ago, ages ago, the same water seeking the same earth, and all it has to do with me is nothing, really. I have to do with it. It seeped into my thoughts long ago and irrigated my memory, and now whenever a mist blossoms I find myself in all times at once. Maybe that's where I've always been.


( Early Monday Verse )

The Quack of Spring

An enormous flock of birds flew over my neighborhood (and extended above the adjacent neighborhood) early this evening when there was still plenty of light in the sky. I think they were ducks this time, as their calls sounded more quacky than honky. A long, rippling line of perhaps two hundred birds led the way, followed closely by several smaller formations and then one "V" of about fifty or sixty birds bring up the rear. There must have been well over three hundred altogether.

It's hard to tell how far the main line extended west, but it must have been at least four city blocks of the sort we don't have here. Say a fifth of a mile or so. The eastern end was almost directly over my house, and several hundred feet up. It was quite the largest single flock of large birds I've ever seen here. They weren't as loud as some smaller flocks have been, both because their calls were softer and because they were higher up than most flocks fly. Still, it was a remarkable sight.

Other than that it was a dull but pleasant enough day. It has remained cool, and will do so for the next three days. The clouds have beefed up a bit and now might bring rain on those days, too, with the best chance for it coming on Thursday. It could be an electrical storm, about which I have mixed feelings. On the one hand I do enjoy thunder and lightning (as long as they aren't too close) but on the other hand the increased likelihood of power outages is distressing. Whatever else the storm brings, I do hope it's generous with its water.

The rose buds are showing a bit more color each day, and I can almost feel their frustration and their eagerness to bloom. Though maybe that's just my frustration and eagerness to see them bloom. They and I will have to wait, though, because they will open only slowly until they get more sunshine and warmth. That should come on Friday, and then over the weekend we will be lucky of we don't get more than we bargained for. It's supposed to top eighty degrees starting on Saturday, and could go quite a bit higher early in the week. It's going to feel more like June than April. But maybe El Nino will decide to provide us with more spring rain and coll breezes before letting full summer descend on us prematurely. I certainly hope so.