I couldn't take my eyes off of them, two boys and a dog- yelling into the lightness of the air because the sound felt so right in the afternoon, just their fair share of noise. The birds know it, the brittle winter reeds let the wind suggest it to them. The whistling cracks in the concrete and stucco know it well as it hollows them into chambers for weed and vine to place frail roots. I can't take my eyes off of them, the rusty step of muscles worn ten years to the future by the sitting and waiting of an entire season, the nervous quickness of their hands, of the dog's speckled knees. They are watching me- the dog with a woman's eyes, knowing of things and ignorant of me, pursued by that lack of acquaintance. The boys with that side-ways curiosity and embarrassed evasion of the eyes- I store each flickering glance of the turning to mirror my turning toward- store each glimpse in jars for lonely days when I've forgotten what innocence looks like out of the corner of one's eye. Store it with the freshness of this air, the smell of soil that must come before the smell of growth.
Introduce new characters to this play directed by finite stretches of blue sky. The sister and brother and the bikes they could only straight ahead in the fall, when their fingers could not quite wrap the handles or their feet cozy the peddles. Now they are propelled by the promise of skinned knees and grass stains. Their mother does not mind that I watch them with unshadowed eyes- no one could mind anything in this weather, this white dress and smile weather, this deceptive near-warmth that pulls off layers and lets the skin of elbows and wrists breathe in with defiance. It's the fleeting aspect of it that lends it perfection, that makes things more beautiful under the looming, passing shadows of clouds moving in. I've been healed of some things by the passing from gray,
I don't know what.
3:54 PM
3.4.12
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