While I Was Gone

Posted on May 4, 2011

A small brown wren in the tangle
of the climbing rose. April:
last rain, the first dazzle
and reluctance of the light. – Cuttings, Robert Hass

While I was gone, April has turned to May. The fickle weather has given way to blazing heat these past few days. Will the very wet winter yield to a very hot summer ?

And then in mid-May the first morning of steady heat
the morning, Leif says, when you wake up, put on shorts and that’s it for the day.
when you pour coffee and walk outside, blinking in the sun.
Strawberries have appeared in the markets, and peaches will soon;
- Late Spring, Robert Hass

The very wet winter has created such a lush life that pollen allergies seem to be all the rage. Maya and I have been plagued with runny nose and Maya had a low grade fever for three nights. Local newspapers speak of pollen counts are the highest in 20 years.

I wasn’t gone anywhere. Had just battened down, caught up on the daily rhythms of waking up to Maya’s “Papa”, the knowledge that Shanthala was ten thousand miles away. Caught up in the cooking, cleaning, working that filled my days. And time spent with friends visiting us from India who stayed for two weeks. Caught up in placating Maya who thought that their appearance had something to do with Shanthala’s disappearance. Who expressed her unhappiness at their presence, showed what seemed akin to sibling rivalry, an unwillingness to spare my time and attention.

While I was gone, a final chapter in the story of Osama vs Obama was written. Osama had been dead for two days before I came upon the news. That’s how conversant I was with my laptop.

While I was gone, stories kept unspooling in my head, but went unsaid, unwritten. The eyes were held spellbound by the chiaroscuro of light and rain, sun and clouds, of the beauty of spring flowers, lupine and california poppy, ice plant and feral cabbage. But the hands remained frozen, unable to sculpt the words that spoke of what the eyes saw, the body felt an my whole being experienced.

A man thinks lilacs against white houses, having seen them in the farm country
south of Tacoma in April, and can’t find his way to a sentence, a
brushstroke carrying the energy of brush and stroke – Spring Drawing, Robert Hass

And now I’m back from my exile. Again. Thank you for waiting, dear reader.