And Then the End of April

"I could see the ocean. Far out it was shaking with light, and boats with their white sails full of the invisible wind moved back and forth. All along the shore the water rolled and rolled its bales of silver." Mary Oliver, from "Roses"







By the end of April what have we not given up? The hand of the eye finally lost touch with the dead year and it glacially glides away off into the river, imperceptibly as years. We drive by an old familiar park. It is a photo album of memories, a descending hill here, brown by leaves, scraggled and dashed by black limbs, and little drumlins, where, up on that ridge or that, we learned to ride three-wheeled scooters with funny helmets on our heads. Old shelter there unused as always but it still breaths like aged lungs. Once in awhile an old man here comes with his wrist tied to a leash and sits out on a picnic bench to wipe along the wood of the sun. He has been coming here for forty years, used to be with his wife, and those same grandaddy oaks reached down to monkey bars and click their fingers nails in the wind across the metal – yes, he could still hear that and the sound, in his album, stayed there on that page for decades. We stand a ways from each other and send each other a blue frisbee. Crickets come to trust our presence and the earth comes alive from under the beige blanket of spring. You run with legs as long as some of the limbs stabbed there in the ground. A few tennis balls bounce like lemon drops over the fence below our ridge. Traffic never stops. The great river in the distance settles down and sits in swirling coves wondering what might be coming from behind and ahead.