Such a Genuine Smile

 

I might have been able to squeeze in one last day of sort of skiing this morning.  But with increasingly long patches of snowless mud, and one pole broken after what will have proven to be the last ski day of the season, I capitulated and acknowledged the onset of spring.  Shall we go for a walk?  Now, the ironic ache of an echo’s rebound, parenting, calling back: “Won’t you come out and play?  Just like she used to call for me, when I was busy.  No, this will just be me and the Mrs.

We live on an incline and with the temperature up in the 50’s the groove down the hill behind the shed is a proper stream that cuts right to join the trough along side what had been the rail tracks, so it can join the culvert up ahead and cut under the tracks through the underpass someone must have built seventy years ago.  On the other side the stream always runs, whether or not there’s melting snow to feed it. I often stand on the trail over the tunnelway and listen to the irresistible sound of the steam turning to accommodate the rocks below. I’ve often thought of what it would be like to hide a microphone down near there, so one could, whenever one chose, simply broadcast that sound throughout the room up on the hill.  And the wireless elfin vision is immediately corrupted by thoughts of what would happen if someone discovered it and began to yell at it or worse. 

We walked the other direction today.  I stopped and considered the huge apple tree further upstream.  If you search this blog I believe I’d used the turn of phrase “never look at this tree the same way again.” Or so some such thing, from a few weeks beyond this day, last year, when that tree explodes with blossoms like some tree along the canal in Naka Meguro.  The tree was quiet today.  So was the crab apple on the corner.  Perhaps those were buds up in the red maples.  On the ground, garlic mustard and skunk cabbage were bravely making a determined push to photosynthesis, a mere forty-eight hours after this ground was under a foot of snow.

 

She always like to take a right on Locust Lane.  I never do that.  There are remarkably large black locust trees, all along the road with their thick grooved bark.  They’re all dead.  Some of them but not enough to explain things, appear to have been bested by upstart hemlocks that decided to grow right along-side them to successfully duke it out for nutrients and the sun.  On Plaines Road, we bumped into Tommy the postman.  What a lovely guy.  Such a genuine smile.  And we were all smiling.  I took off my sweater and considered myself there, in a tee-shirt, in the springtime.

 

 

 

Thursday, 03/11/21