A Spring Memory
I Remember What I Have to do
There will be no moment before the finish. Saving yourself begins immediately.
Before going to Connecticut, on the phone, my mother told me that she heard a mourning dove outside the window. From New York, I moved toward my own. An overcast morning, with the soft cloudy light, there, on the firesecape, was no dove. No birds at all, actually, but I remembered a few days before I had heard one, and I told her. To us, we concluded, that is when spring starts to begin, how that sound seemed, above all, the initial introduction. Steeping and in recovery, every so often, a message makes it through that says, spring is on its way. The birds first.
Then crocuses. A refined light in the morning, and, later, in the afternoon. Music seems, one lunch, clearer and fine-tuned. On Tuesday, the trees have buds, and on Friday, the buds have opened. Then the air inside the car is warm when you get in, even if it’s cold outside, and the subway stations are cool and more damp than the weather above ground.
Until one fine morning, you wake, and every cold thing is over.
