Monday morning, the screen door on the back porch
opened with a soft scritch to thick, moist air; the wooden back steps were
black and lustrous with moisture; the whole back yard was dripping. Not quite
rain, but mist, mist so thick there wasn't much difference.The dropped
shoulders of the world.
Tuesday, actual rain. Enough to speckle the
windshield, then spread out in feathers along the side-windows as I raced
up the boulevard, anxious to get to campus in time to make copies before my
first class starts. Enough to know that the lounge cushions would be
soaked and there was nothing much to be done about it - I would have to rely on
the afternoon's heat to cook them out.
On my way out to the second campus in Napa later
that afternoon, small children dwarfed by back packs, thick with no longer
needed jackets and sweaters from morning, walked away from the elementary
school in threes and fours. Driving home from my evening class, a spectral
silver glow fanned along a ridge line: night work in the vineyards. And then
rounding a corner, I was startled by workers near the road, backlit by this
same halogen-glow coming from three pairs of lights stacked high, ladder-like,
on the front end of a yellow four-wheeled tractor, resembling nothing so much
as a mechanical, headless, yet six-eyed, centaur.
One small sprig of red leaves amongst the vines as
I drove by, lickety-clip.
And this morning, on a walk around Shollenberger
Park, the muted fragrance of alkaline dust and brittle oat grass. The marsh is
completely dry, the bottom cracked and white; the grasses whorled and matted,
cowlicks on some tawny-beast's hide. The touch of rain from the beginning of
the week, the dripping morning fog has done little but freshen up the creeping
bushes. The little sparrows hop about, busy with seeds and insects but most
likely no longer under the non-stop grind of feeding nestlings. This is the
small trough between seasons; the full melancholy of fall has not descended,
but the onerous demands, the tenacious grip of summer is lessening.
School has
started but the big papers have not been assigned.
We all breathe deep,
grateful for space.
