April is the cruelest month but kindness does not trigger the same memories or impose the same rhythm on the day. Too early, too dark, too cold at this moment -- I wait for the earth to turn a bit, for the sun to brighten the eastern clouds. Now is not the time to rush into darkness. I wait in my room and reread a poem I've never fully forgotten or remembered.
The day is here now, revealed not by bright color but by infinite shades of grey -- the snow settled on my neighbor's roof, woodsmoke curling skyward, frost trying to hold back the eager buds of spring. That tiny bit of color, there despite the snow, the frost, the grey despair.
Blood is shaking my heart -- red, not grey, living, not dead. By this, and this only, we exist.
I brush snow from the saddle. It is brighter now, the world containing The Waste Land is more than a wasteland.
I undo the lock, hop on my bike and leave behind an empty room.
Keep 'em rolling,
Kent "Mountain Turtle" Peterson
Issaquah WA USA
2 comments:
I just learned the Indie Rock band, Modest Mouse, is largely from Issaquah. Smallish world, no? Check them if you aren't familiar.
Gotta ride more (don't we all?). Crush the Commonwealth crops up in a few short weeks and I'm painfully unprepared for the 390 miles across Pennsylvania.
I heard you guys got some snow down there. Oddly enough (not to rub it in) but the same time those reports were coming in it was very sunny a little further north.
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