In The Morning Quiet
The sun glints off the back of the tree frogs. They perch on the rail of the deck, dewy, watching the morning. A cloud refuses to drift off the mountain. I like it here, rain forever.
But the Sun disagrees, climbing, climbing. The crickets continue, like they always do, singing from the tall grass. You can always count on ‘em. When nobody says anything, especially if they should, the crickets are there.
I wander through quiet rooms, put the coffee on, and look around. There’s a quality of resurrection, or the promise of it, with the first rays of morning, when yesterday has died, and today slumbers, waiting, waiting.
The mad dash of a frenetic Thursday lingers, echoes frozen in strewn objects. Waiting to come to life, I look at them like they belong to someone who’s died, and left them here a moment ago. You can see the intentions then.
The shirt with the buttons hanging on the back of the chair: I’ll be going to church with Grandma for the first time in…ever. Need buttons.
A geology book still in the mailer, some apples from the orchard last week, and a telescope. Fresh rays of the sun cast pinecone shadows on the green wall under the cuckoo clock. Tick tock.
Who is this guy?
I go back to the porch, with coffee. The frogs are still there. So is the cloud on the mountain. One refuses to be shooed off the chair, and hops onto my knee instead. We watch the crows fly over, patrolling.
Oh, what philosopher said Nature is best, because Nature is pure? I see his point, but would miss people terribly. Nature shows me what’s my construction, and what’s not, and helps me untangle it when needed. If I were trapped in screens and concrete all day and all night, never seeing the stars or morning glories twining out of the dew, I might think I knew everything, and that would be hell.
There’s a pause in the October air, infinite, peaceful, tinged with the urgency of a breath held underwater. It can’t last, but shouldn’t, either.
Soon the sun will blaze down, and I’ll shake hands and wave my arms and mash the gas pedal and peer intently for any opportunity of a bad pun along the grand vistas.
Soon, all of this will come back to life.
To think: we’re here to live it.
TGIF.
–Josh
Two new apple trees reach for the sky. I’m starting an orchard, early. (Winter will see the main planting.)