Chill

Spring is three weeks late this year, they apologize over a crackling phone line. You walk through the garden looking for signs of bloom, but all there is is an ocean of dandelions. Cover the fledgling sprouts with blankets. Light a fire at twilight and will yourself to sit in the chill. It will come, it always does, eventually. Find an apartment on tenth street and think maybe there are miracles to be had, yet. 

In a tired moment late in the afternoon, I sat staring into the sunlight, begging myself to be productive, but no work was to come. I waited a little longer, silent, and there it was: pulled out a pen and paper, wrote the story as it told itself to me, complete with curlicues and heartstrings stretching. We get in our own way so often, when actually everything we are hoping for is just looking for a quiet moment in which to appear. 

Everything magic has just been waiting, patient underneath the layer of snow you have carried these last years. Spring is on its way now, the thaw is beginning, when the ground is clear the magic will sprout, if you just wait a little longer, you'll find yourself again.

Traverse

Dark skies stretch from one mountain range to the next, pierced only by occasional headlights and the rushing sound of the spring flood. The stars like a blanket, quiet tonight, unassuming, and not a single one falls though I will them to. Eyes adjusting, the stillness of the stars give way to a myriad of traffic across the firmament: airplanes and satellites criss-crossing the dark sea, on their way to other destinations, other adventures. 

He writes and says he may have an assignment for you in Alaska, should you be so inclined, and you tell him that after June 30, you'll have nothing keeping you anywhere and your calendar is free. 

I came looking for meteoroids exploding into the atmosphere, but I was given a reminder that there are places to go, instead. 

Both burn,
but one lives to tell it.

of Wills

Mind empty, reminders of deadlines swirling around the periphery while all I want is to till the soil and wear out my limbs. What use is technology when the earth lies at your feet? What use is contributing to the onslaught of twisted information and empty emotions? When there is grass to be touched by bare feet, when there are mountains to climb and stories to tell? I am reminded of months spent in this desert, where only stories and earth mattered. He says If I keep working this much I can retire in a year and you think yes, but you forgot to stop along the way and look up. The dandelions are carpeting the fields. There's a truth hiding in the folds of that mountain at the edge of the valley.

The things that were to come are too fantastic not to tell.

Down the Road

The desert sun returns, your shoulders flush picking daffodils, race down the freeway into the valley like you're flying on clouds, everything is different now. He writes tentative questionmarks into the starry night but you're not looking for questionmarks, you're looking for firm handshakes and confident punctuation. In the rearview mirror, three years of dust dances, you know what it means. You have no time for kicking up anymore. 

I'm making up for lost time. If you want to get on board, now is the time to know what you're doing.

the Meters

You wake in a blissful daze, dawn spreading across the grassy fields like an expectant lover, running their fingertips over your clavicle. If I didn't think too hard about it, I could still feel his breath in my ear, could remember his weight against the small of my back, a brief linger in a hallway. There's a bruise where your hand used to be. 

The country is serene, the nights' silence punctured only by the rampant spring stream past the fence. I pick tender rhubarb fledglings, spend my days making pies, cooking, watering the plants, writing a few words. We walk along the side of the mountain and discuss life's questions like they are no longer impossible to answer, if only you don't look directly at them. One foot in front of the other, say yes now, and cross that bridge when you get there. She laughs into the sunset. You think of the piercing blue of his eyes and wonder what yes looks like on this side of the tracks. 

you make a note
to find out.

Rocky Mountains

There will be some turbulence, the pilot's crackling voice says over the PA. For those of you who travel this route a lot, you know this is what happens when you cross the Rockies. I draw myself out of my sleep deprived revelry to look out over barren lowlands and snowy cap. I have traveled this route a lot. I'm prepping sandwiches and seltzers and will meet you at arrivals, she buzzes into your phone, a geographic shift in reunions but somehow the most right kind of all. An adventure begins, it starts now, it spreads out across the year and tells you to expect the unexpected, how could this encounter not be a wink from the Universe about stardust to come? I am ready now, I whisper into the mountains, as they wriggle thousands of feet beneath us. Flight attendants, please prepare for arrival. 

It's as good a sign as any. 

Re: Boot

You sound good, she says, enjoy it while it lasts. You look at her with question marks for eyes, does she not see how the whole world is painted in a different palette, does she not know everything is different now? She writes you another prescription and you weigh it against the sunlight at your fingertips. Think, we're all just trying to make it through. 

A month ago, you could not stand without the greates effort, and here you are, planning adventures in the sky. She says, we know these things come back, and she doesn't have to tell me, doesn't have to explain my own innards to my poorly assemble psyche, who else has lived through these ebbs and flows but me? It doesn't matter. 

I walk back out into the street, feel New York pulse underneath me like a perpetual seismic shift, and at last I feel ready again to roll with its moves, at last we are back in step. The trees are green in Madison Square Park, my eyes smile when I see them in the mirror, I have a long way yet to climb out of this ravine, but, oy, at last I see the blue skies I am trying
to reach.