April 23 2008, 08:42 PM The Greening

I have never lived anywhere that did not have the steady punctuation of seasons, the quaternary turn from the quiet repose of winter to summer's furious sun and then back again. I am offered both comfort and surprise by these transitions, each and every time. The wet snuffly nose of spring is on us now, putting the warm smells of waking earth and walking rains into the air to fill it. In this place it's a capricious thing, spring. I am glad the tomatoes are safe and tiny under their little artificial sun. They will want to keep their feet warm, and the ground outside is not there yet. The peas, on the other hand, do not mind it out there at all, and I am hoping they will soon completely wake and thrive, pumping good into the earth for the nightshades to take back up again.

This morning, I took to work the long way, down behind the lip of the hill and over the old bridges. I did it to become a little more familiar; I do not take that path as often as I should. The trees around were close and leafing out, new young leaves that are still stretching, still an electric green.

This evening, I walked home with a storm at my heels. I took the high route, so as to be closer to the sky and be better able to keep an eye behind. Gloom boiled there, lit from within by bashful lightning. The rain was falling out there, too, some four miles distant and closing while I was yet only half way home, a strange grey part of the sky that ended on the left in a razor-sharp diagonal against the blue and white behind. I was safe home with a coffee before it overran us all with a brief whirl of wind and wet, with rumblings that shook the panes in their sashes.

The birds sing their songs, punctuated by the distant cracks of aluminum bats sending out arcs on the yonder ballfield. They sing even into twilight these days; birdsong in twilight.