With or Without
Yesterday last day of ski season bright and warm the slopes “corning up nicely” loudspeakers around the base lodge blaring not-so-modern-anymore “I’ll stop the world and melt with you” all these people with pricey gear from Nassau Union Fairfield someplace else clomping around in clunky boots with season passes to this place bidding goodbye to each other a woman my age shouts to young daughters of a woman half our age “I’ll see you two next year but I bet you’ll be taller then” and mother replies “So will you!” goodbye goodbye . . . .
What was I doing there?
A long way from those slopes is this morning’s walk with collies to road’s end every day begins for us so dead dark all winter but now in early April dim light we hear the voice not-so-far in still-bare woods: first vireo greenfinch preacher or professor bird of the redeye bid spring won’t shut up he’s back first him then another and another in darkthaw dawn they “quench their thirst with drops of dew or rain that adhere to buds or twigs” joined then by robins shadowy figures hop hop hop on darkling meadow still only half melted out under red sky morning no sailors big rain later maybe tonight “will impact the entire listening area” and that will be it for the snow and somebody’s youth and somebody else’s health and memory itself but nothing stops the birdsong with or without the world goes on.
