Simple Observations

Gray Gloves

Today, sweet jesus –

today I see the sun!

And it makes the sky

blue - jesus! ink blue,

Pittsburgh bridge blue,

never-too-much sugar in a summer

berry pie blue –

my gloves don’t match the sky today

blue –

Oh, today. Today I will be dramatic as a poet and surrender myself to any degree of cold that dares denigrate my joy, because the sun is shining like a halogen light bulb and I am ready to bask.

Truth be told, it’s only been a few days since I last wrote my blog, but when I woke up to a blue sky and sunshine, I didn’t care what the thermometer read. I wanted get out and stand in the light.

At my spot on the top of the mountain facing the sky, I park my car and get out. There is no one else here and I’m glad of it, because today I want to cuddle up to this place and take a closer look; choose the detail over the distance. And I’d rather not have a bunch of people walking around.

I climb over the concrete barrier that divides the street from the sidewalk. My boots crunch down into the snow and it sounds like the ripping of Velcro from Velcro, a minor side-note like the squeak of styrofoam-against-styrofoam. I think about how much I love metaphor and how difficult it is to draw pictures of sound. I wonder what metaphor will come to me today, what I will make of this detail-drawn day.

Between the street parking and sidewalk that abuts the railing, and thus the edge of the mountain, is a thin strip of snow. All I can think to call this slender space is garden, because it holds holly bushes and a tree. I stand here because I like the feeling of the snow under my books. Besides, on the sidewalk is bulbous ice that looks like a roiling boil frozen over, like a bubble of mucus, the color of whale blubber, of cold lard.

I lift my face and look out at the city because it’s there. The only movement is of trucks and cars sliding by, far away – small as dashes - along the narrow highways gray as old tape. There are no people and no birds; there is no wind. There is nothing but the blue sky. The buildings make clouds out of steam.

But this is the way of the city– so I turn my back on it - and look to the sun.

Eyes closed, I hear the raucous call of scraw, scraw and know it is a crow somewhere dark and glistening, bold scavenger in the cold. Eyes open, I look down and survey where I stand. I’m in a garden. In the summer, this strip is dark with large splinters of mulch. Now it is implacably covered with dirty snow. I squat to get a better look at the berryless male holly, an evergreen without the slender, sharp needles of pine. While the waxy, serrated leaves are usually dark green and monotone, in this sunlight - they are variegated and bright. Each leaf closest to the sidewalk holds a thin dusting of salt, the way my clay pots  hold calcium deposits from the tap. In this sunshine, there is a delicacy of detail I had not noticed before. Even while the sky is an overarching color and the sun is an overriding light, I am caught up in the smaller world of this place.

Along the spine of the wooden bench beside me is a long bumpy mountain range of ice. It has soft ridges like an old mountain, like the Appalachians. But it is not really a mountain - it is an ice line along wood – it is clear water, frozen. The sun on it looks like electricity burning in a filament bulb. See how willing I am to make metaphor of most anything? Again I wonder what this blog post will mean – how I will translate it to something larger.

I scrape away at the snow beneath the base of the holly, as if I’m looking for an answer - because I want to see what lies below. I hope to see something small, insect moving in the secret world of soil. But that’s silly. It’s still freezing, mid-January, still in the depths-of-winter dead (or hiding). There’s nothing here that I can get to but frozen mulch and rock hard ground. A single slice of green unfolds in the form of a hollow wild onion, probably dead now, for all my scraping. For all my trying to find something, it is not what I want. There’s no movement of life – that I can see – here.

Finally I get up to leave. Even though it’s brilliantly sunny, it’s the coldest it’s been in days and I’m beginning to feel it in my fingers and toes.

So now, truth be told, days after going to my spot, I try to write my blog and, like the sunshine, it gives me pause. But not because of its brilliance or illumination, but because of the lack of it. I want a metaphor for that day - for the details I noticed – for the effort of driving there to be inspired. But I can’t seem to scratch through the frozen ground to find anything – not even the smallest sign of life. I went all the way to my place on a superb day of sunshine and yet – nothing. No poignancy, no big meaning. No aha or hallelujah moment with which to end. And you know what? Today that's okay. 

As much as I love metaphors, and drawing conclusions, and finding meaning in the subtleties and the synchronicities of life, sometimes there isn't anything to find.
But there's always a sky. And sometimes it’s gray. That day it was glorious. That day, it was blue.

And sometimes we see the sun. And after long cold days of dark, it makes that one day all the better.

Today that's enough. To feel the sunshine, to see the blue – to draw no other conclusion than:

It makes me happy to stand in the sun, quiet in the snow.