Eternal Spring

The sun coddles my arms and reminds me that I am fine. That's what a good day like this one does. The sun sticks to the thin and wide leaves of the Tasmanian pepper tree like wax, opaque but not dull. Miles, our cat, walks out from the kitchen and positions himself as I am so our bodies address the sun at the same angle. He pauses for a moment before walking down the line of light to the ceramic pot cupping the pepper tree. He pauses there and then moves along to where the light is eaten by the unfurling shade given by the newly born maple leaves. He pauses between clusters of bluebells nodding their fragrance at him and then follows scattered bits of shadow back into the house.

In a month I will be writing from a dock and not a deck. We're moving into a houseboat and there will surely be a different view--nothing will be green. No cedar, no maple, no bamboo. Just water reflecting light so purely that it will burn to watch and touch with bare arms and wanting eyes. My suspicious, curious and nosy-neighbor staring-eyes will peek from sleep and glimpse some strand of electric light or moonlight shimmering like pearly beads across the nape of the water, and not the only lit window out of the three that make the bay window that our bedroom window faces. Every shade is pulled in every window of that wall of that house. In a year, not one has been drawn open. Every night at 4 am I wake to the vision my imagination projects onto it of what's behind it. Three slumped figures at a small, round table, one half of which is occupied by a portly woman in a dark, stained housedress. Her face is sweaty. She can't sleep and so she sits at the table with her sons and cuts coupons they'll go out and purchase groceries with. She smokes cigarettes and reads the bible while they shoot dice and play euchre and canasta in their underwear. The tv drones infomercials and leaks a sound as steady as the placid yellow clapboard face of the house my eyes lazily fall on during day. Five windows, five drawn shades blocking light from entering.

Not our house, ever. All windows, all light.