Thursday, May 17, 2018

The Spring Disturbance

Spring is my favorite season of the year.  At least it used to be.  Everything is becoming new again!  Wake up trees! Wake up leaves on the trees!  Wake up grass and flowers, birds and SHUT UP BIRDS. 

The bright morning is SO early this year, and if it was simply waking me for an early rise complete with fresh coffee and solitude, I would marry Spring every year.  But it's waking every mother-lovin' member of my household at the butt-crack of dawn except for my husband.  Smart, Mike. 

My cats are still Winter fat, so their small paws that press good-morning against the ridge of my side-sleeping body feel like a branding iron.  My youngest son is delighted to jump into bed with me, because I ignore him during the day, and the early sun is an invitation to access mom when she's down.  As soon as my coffee pot begins percolating, my older son who sleeps above the kitchen, in a room with four windows pointing alarm clock East, is roused and leaps down the stairs to greet me.

Ah well.  Spring is for waking up.  Summer for wilting into rest.  Fall for...whatever, I just want some alone time.  Here's a gem from last November, when everything is DARK in the morning.

Small Sky

This cramped house,
to which I still add books, cats, and picture frames,
has windows in each room
but ceilings that hang so low my sun salutation
becomes a knuckle scrape across popcorn finish.

Once I could sit in the living room rocker,
view our vegetable garden and a slice of the sun
rising behind oak trees lined with mist and blush clouds,
but my tabby cat now has his perch beside that window
to survey the cardinals who flit about my neighbor's wiry brush.

I can sit behind his feline throne, wait until he leaves
to chase away his narrow-nosed brother,
but now the oak trees have extended their reach,
each year widening a frame around my small sky.

Today, there is a stream of white light
slowly dissolving into a stroke of gray.
I fix my eye on that gleam
and journal in pencil,
altering my world where I can.   

Dacia R. Ball ~ November 2017

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