A scream.
(Nothing.)
A keening cry; a gull screams quite close;
Something hits the skylight; I’m awake.
I open my eyes a little:
The sun has barely hit the top of the building next door;
Screaming: Kyuk-kyuk-kyuk-kyah-kyah!… Keer-ee-uck!…
Ki-ki-ki!… Keer-keer-kee-kee-keer!…
Hyah, kyah, kyah-kyah!…
Sounds of a scuffle on the roof: I’m awake.
I close the skylight, and pull the pillow over my head;
And sleep.
Spring watch?
Is it summer yet? Or is it still spring?
Here in southern New England, I think of summer as a time when the weather patterns settle down and become fairly predictable. When it gets sunny, you know it’s going to stay sunny for a few days. In summertime, you can count on the weather.
We’ve had four days without rain now, but it hasn’t felt like summer. The weather has been a little too variable: windy, calm, warm, cool, dry, damp. It got up near 80 yesterday, but we had a blanket on last night. Sunny this morning, but clouds moved in today, heavy enough that I brought an umbrella when I went up to the church late this afternoon. Now they’re saying we’re going to have mixed showers and sunshine over the next few days.
We can’t quite trust the weather yet. Guess that means it’s still spring.
The arrival of local vegetables defines late spring for me. Last Sunday, I had to drive from Chelmsford back to New Bedford, and I decided to use some back roads instead of getting right on the highway. I found myself driving past Verrill Farm, not far from where we once lived, and I could see that their strawberry plants were in full bloom. That could mean only one thing: it was asparagus time. I pulled into the farmstand.
There it was, right at the entrance to the farmstand. Asparagus: bunches of thin, tender stalks, slightly purple at the base shading into pale green and up to the dark green tips. My mouth started watering as soon as I saw the asparagus.
And rhubarb: long, gently curved stalks, a vivid vermilion with green undertones. I got three or four pounds of it. And early raspberries, horrendously expensive at six dollars for a scant pint, but I had to buy some anyway. And pea tendrils, an odd vegetable to be sure, but I was craving fresh greens so I got some of them, too. And I got some local honey to sweeten up the rhubarb.
So I’ve been eating well all week. I finished the last of the pea tendrils tonight. I’ll go out and get some more asparagus on Friday — none of that tough rubbery asparagus they fly in from California, you have to get it fresh and local, so fresh and tender you don’t even have to cook it. And maybe I’ll get some local lettuce, too.
Soon it will be time for local peas, and all kinds of greens, and then strawberries. And strawberry season marks the beginning of summer.
The drive from New Bedford up to Cambridge takes you through wooded swamps in the town of Freetown on the south coastal plain of Massachusetts. At this time of year the swamps are mostly gray: gray twigs, gray branches, gray tree trunks. Just now, as leaves are just starting to come out on some trees, you’ll also see colors that are almost autumnal in hue. The brilliant crimson of the last of the Red Maple flowers almost hides the gray branches in places. A nearby maple will appear dull orange from a distance, from the reddish hue of the tiny new leaves just bursting out from buds. The hanging blossoms on a birch tree are nearly yellow, with just a tinge of green. As you drive by on the highway, winter gray still dominates; the crimson, dull orange, and bright yellow hues will last for just a few days, a brief anticipation of autumn before the swamp trees turn brilliant green.
Walking into the cold northeasterly wind, bits of white blew into my face.
I still remember the May snowstorm twenty years ago; no electricity for a week.
But these bits of white were apple blossom petals, blown off the tree by the wind.
This was on one of the street corners where immigrants protested yesterday.
The apple blossom petals blow off to reveal green new leaves emerging.
This morning, as I was getting ready to head up to the church, I happened to look across the street at the maple tree there. Our apartment is on the second floor, so I was looking right into the middle of the tree, the outermost branches still mostly covered with its tiny crimson flowers, although some of the flowers are dropping and the seeds are starting to form.
Some small birds were flitting through the branches. They were flying among the maple blossoms, presumably cropping either insects insects in the flowers, or the nectar from the flowers. This kind of behavior is typical of warblers, so I walked over the the window hoping for a glimpse of some brightly-colored mirgratory warbler. But is was plain ordinary House Sparrows engaging in this warbler-like behavior. Perhaps this is an example of an invasive species which is adept at surviing in a relatively hostile urban environment, filling an ecological niche usually filled by another species.
More rain has come tonight.
Rain spatters now and again on skylights and roof.
What better sound for sleeping?
After a six-month’s absence, a dozen or so of the recreational boats have returned to their summer slips in the Pope’s Island Marina.
Gray and faintly yellow clouds move over me, a few drops of rain. I stand, waiting and watching, and sure enough, a faint end of a rainbow after the clouds move past. Humid spring air diffuses the bright sun low over the city, and everything shimmers faintly, and things far away from me are bluish, blue-er, blue-and-gray. The huge clouds looming and moving in a sky so big it’s almost hard to look up.
Fourteen gulls watch, from a safe distance, as three people eat a picnic on one of the concrete benches looking out at the marina. I can smell the food as I walk closer. One gray-and-white gull rushes two immature gulls, driving them away with outstretched wings. The other gulls watch the people intently; they haven’t seen a picnic in a while.
A lone man in a faded orange sweatshirt stands on the rocks below the bridge, snaps a fishing rod over his head, casts into the clear water of the harbor, and jerkily reels in his plug. He doesn’t bother to look at me as I walk above him.
Away up in the inner harbor, the silhouette of one last loon who has not flown north yet. It dives under the surface of the water bright with the white gold light of setting sun, a liquid reflection that hurts my eyes. I never see it come back up again.
Laundry night: I load up the car with the duffel bag full of dirty clothes and head out to the my favorite laundromat, the one with an attendant. The big TV in the corner is on, with some inane show about celebrities, so once the wash is going I run out to do some shopping. A light rains starts while I’m in the store. Back to put the clothes in the dryer; now the TV has a game show, so I sit in the car and begin reading Ned Rorem’s memoir, Knowing When To Stop. I decide I like his grim but refreshing words:
Life has no meaning. We’ve concocted the universe as we’ve concocted God. (Anna Noailles: “If God existed, I’d be the first to know.”) Our sense of the past and our sense of encroaching death are aberrations unshared by the more perfect “lower” animals. On some level everyone concurs — pedants, poets, politicians, and priests. The days of wine and rose are not long, but neither are they short; they simply aren’t. Hardly a new notion, but with me the meaninglessness [of life] was clear from the start….
I disagree with some of the details of what Rorem says, but not the underlying substance. Life is meaningless, and that is probably why I am a Red Sox fan. Baseball season has begun once again, and Johnny Damon has been traded to the New York Yankees; seeing Damon cleanshaven and with short hair is just unnecessary, an additional bit of evidence that life has no meaning.
When I head back in to fold my now-dry clothes, the ballgame is on. Curt Schilling is pitching, holding off an attack by the Seattle Mariners in the fifth. He’s got quite a gut, Schilling does; baseball is the sport of all different body types. A split-finger fastball makes the last out: another reason that I know this is an imperfect meaningless world is that I have yet to be able to see the difference between the pitches when I’m watching a game. Except once when I was given tickets to an April ballgame in Fenway Park and Tim Wakefield was pitching; believe me, I could see that he was pitching knuckleballs. It rained that April ballgame of years ago, just as it’s raining tonight.
Back in the car, I find the game on WSAR out of Fall River. “Are those ambience microphones waterproof? They’ve got waterproof covers? I see. Schilling’s back on the mound…” I can follow the game better on the radio, I can imagine that I’m in Fenway Park. Fenway, where hopes springs eternal in April, only to fade in September or maybe mid-October; except, impossibly, in October of 2004.
The rain is steady, it really hasn’t increased in density…. but it’s still coming down, the pitch, a swing and a miss! The Red Sox waste another double. After eight, two-to-one Boston….
But Schilling went eight innings with only three hits. Just one more inning to go…two quick outs…a base hit by Ichiro Suzuki…and then….
…and the throw is to first, and this one is over…. Jonathan Papelbon gets the save! A two-to-one victory for the Sox!
Hey, maybe there is hope, maybe life does have meaning after all.