"Tuesday...Afternoon"

"I'm just beginning to see, now I'm on my way. It doesn't matter to me, chasing the clouds away..." (Moody Blues)

After dumping ten inches, the rain stopped. This morning the sun grabbed at the edges and muscled through a high gauze of remaining clouds. We are blotting the industrial rug in the finished basement with every towel we own, and in spite of the fact that it squishes when we walk on it, are optimistic that it will dry. We’ve had wet before, but not to this degree, so we are not sure what to anticipate. Cross your fingers that we avoid mold.

Today though, is not the day to address temperamental pumps, extension chords whose prongs break off in the outlet, or an absent minded cook who tosses cans into the recycling bin in the dim garage, and returns to the bubbling pot of bean soup failing to realize that she turned off the pump instead of the light. Let’s put all that behind us, shall we?

Right, I knew you’d agree. Instead, let’s talk about the inch-long daffodil fingers pushing out of the earth by the front lamp post, and the purple crocuses whose buds are swelling at the edge of the brick porch. Let’s climb on the granite ledges out back and bend down to view paper-thin folds of white as the snow drops emerge from crevises in the back rock.

What if we absorb the vision of the brown-water pond down the street that has tumbled over its banks and laps at the crumbling foundation of the old ice house abutting the winding road? We can gaze at the spiked branches and briars on the banks, puddled in a rippling swirl like black skirts brushing their invisible ankles. Oh, I know--for fun, let’s take a detour and drive through a foot of water to view the rushing river cresting through the unused fields and over the stone walls at the entrance to Weir River Farm.

Now, that’s what I’m talking about.