Lament

Lament

I have matured, and, at the proper time, the winnower will come for me. I will be ready. I have cast off my seed into the rich humus born of past generations. It has taken root, and now sings its own Song of Spring

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--

John Keats, “To Autumn”

It is fitting on this day of cold bluster and unsentimental sunlight to write of endings. Spring, so recently past, seems a dream. Was it so long ago that I, like spring, burst onto the scene? The faces and days of my youth are veiled within the mist of memory, but not beyond my reach. I inhale and the aroma of lilacs engulfs me, just as they encircled my house. A sister is born; she is named June Iris, but she has arrived too early in April. She is carried home in her namesake month. My mother places her in the sunlight that leaks between our drapes. We have to be quiet; she is sleeping. . . . In an instant I am riding my bicycle beneath the elms whose branches rise to the sky like the vaulted ceiling of a cathedral. Lining my street, they provide a cool respite from the relentless heat of a Midwestern sun. The orb drifts over, shifting the patterns of shade and light as though it were setting designs in stained glass. Sometimes with a friend, but more often alone, I gallop my two-wheeled steed up and down the block. Obsessed with horses and the westerns on television, I have no need for companions to challenge my imagination and diminish the enjoyment. In pretend, I wile away the days of girlhood that reach to a future I never consider.

I try to recall the sounds. The birds sang, I’m certain. Surely there were the shouts that accompanied the games. But there is no music in my reverie, no sound to break the white silence. Like the caterpillar in its cocoon, I’m insulated within myself. The Wind. I remember the wind as it rushed through the elms, ruffling the branches or swirling them in circles. I turn and am standing in the picture window that looked out upon our street. The sky is blackish green. The trees shift violently from side to side. I watch, oblivious to the potential danger of a breakaway limb, mesmerized by the dance before me.