The sky is darkening and the wind picking up. There have been a few drops of rain and some grumbling of thunder. We decide there's enough wind to close our patio umbrella.
However, two doves on our property wall, feathers bunching and rippling with the strengthening breeze, are just sitting there, as if on a date, watching the exciting sky.
Shouldn't they be looking for shelter? I'm fascinated. I watch them for about 20 minutes and, sure enough, one jumps on the other, presumably getting it on.
Afterwards, they sit (neither lights a cigarette), for what I assume to be an appropriate amount of time. I'm impressed with their dynamic style of courtship in the face of adversity, humbled even into an old man's kind of nostalgia.
Eventually, one leaves. I wish I had been observant enough to say who had left whom, but as it is I'd only be guessing, revealing more of me than of them.
An hour has now passed since I first spied them. Both are gone. And, the expectant storm has yet to arrive.
I feel a bit lost, as if something once so important has left me.
And then the lightning begins. Once again, in the east. Down-strikes as intense and lasting as any I've seen since my fire look-out days. I don't understand it, but the most destructive winds this past week have been from the east. Monsoons, with origins in the Gulf of California, have always come from the west and south of us. Something is topsy turvy and I find myself more nervous about what's coming than ever before.
I want to feel more capable, better prepared for whatever is coming. Expecting the worse, I go through the house disconnecting cables and unplugging what I can.
In the odd way mind and memory work, I found myself thinking back to when a bus-swallowing sinkhole opened up in our neighborhood. I speculated just a bit, given the increase in crime around here, if something from the underworld had slunk out.
The street was blocked and fenced like Area 51. I suppose some engineers had to determine how extensive the risk before addressing an actual and obvious solution, like filling it.
Then, when a huge pile of sandy soil showed up, my first reaction was, "Well, it's about time." However, while driving by, we noticed a boy attempting to scale it and I was immediately transported back to the manmade hills behind Stephen Decatur Elementary School.
Once upon a time, any barren spot or construction site held promise of adventure and discovery. Young minds paint best on a wild canvas.
While watching this youth's ascent, I wondered when exactly a large mound dumped along a road stopped being a magical call to action and became again just dirt.
And, I wondered when nature became something I feared.
Truant Dream
What wasn't said, or I didn't hear, in the dire warnings
of a drought and storm filled future
was that human behavior would escalate
along with rising temperatures
And what is unleashed on the whole
will erupt as well from the individual.
Our planet, right or wrong! No escape!
We're in it and on it together!
And yet, we are the more perishable, the least necessary,
which might be why we behave so poorly.
Weakness is like that. It hides, or strives to prove
what can't be proven.
There is a dream, long paused, I'd like to return.
I have the brochures.
But you know how a self can want
what makes no sense
while what most needs attention
— all that is bursting and burning —
is left for others,
left for when that delinquent messiah
finally shows up.
YOU ARE READING
Who Dad?!
Science-FictionAfter a revealing search for his birth mother, Lee declined to pursue the paternal side of the story. Little did he know how the fate of the planet itself was wrapped up in his own star-crossed origin. Only through the unexpected appearance of an al...
