Years Through Ordinary Time
The birds in my neighborhood circled the pigeon toed morning of the off kilter day plucking lavender blossoms like they were olive branches as the sky faded from yellow to blue to gray. And the lawns looked at rest from the summers green growing season as they sat poised for blankets made of leaves and the feet of Thanksgiving Day children. That particular morning the air felt familiar and I knew that it was why you had called; some vague temptation from a September friend here to tap my weakness for cool mornings. And it was all so familiar as the dog days fell asleep on the sidewalk of the calm and quiet Tuesday. The summers overgrowth sat, now in bags, across the street and I rifled through sleeping sweaters hidden in hibernation through summers long sprinkler afternoons. These were the days when the sky could pull you along; walking outside in front of the broken screen door that always slammed too loud and stole my ageing neighbors attention away from the horse races that played throughout the day and reflected in the window. But I would think nothing of those minor moments of quiet that were murdered by the doors fatal blow and would instead look west towards the mountains that seemed to presided over these mornings repeating to themselves or to each other “and it was good, and it was good”. These mornings were mountaintops, the crows that circled all took the shape of doves, and somehow everything looked beautiful but ready to collapse. Those mornings were the closest it got, the brief beating of wings before the night would come in with booze on its breath. And there is a lesson to be learned, down the line, that these things repeat like the seasons and the rain will come back year after year. Years later things would bronze over and entire weeks would reduce to one warm morning when everything seemed to fit. So I would find myself, on certain cold mornings, shivering with the ice on my windshield and wondering what the hell I was doing here. I would drive to work cold with no great voice in the distance to remind me that it was good. And so as the years would continue to repeat, counted off by Sunday after Sunday in ordinary time I would remember these mornings and wonder when it would be the time that we would do something extraordinary.
