I don’t like
March. First of all, the name.
March.
It’s a one
word imperative sentence.
I see a mean
sergeant in a field, whistle hanging round his neck. He’s shouting at me, the
overweight, winter-worn GI trying to rouse myself from the deep sludge of January
and February, my uniform bursting its buttons, my fly stopped halfway in its
tracks by flab.
I am not up
for Marching. I can’t. In fact, I’ve just been able to start walking without a
cane. I’m Persephone, just back from her abduction by a convalescence-comfortable
sofa and a wide screen. The trim physical therapist explains that my leg muscle
cells aren’t smooth anymore. They are more like a mushed up bowl of spaghetti.
Along
Highway 19, metal beasts have surfaced from the underworld. Uprooted grey trees
litter the hillsides with amputated limbs, twisted fingers. A rural two-lane
must double its size. Businesses and houses disappear, leaving in their places
red mud flats indented with Caterpillar tracks. Traffic backs up for half a
mile, from Li’l Smoky’s Barbecue to the junction of 19. Tempers flare.
I am not
ready for this. The trees are starting to bud. There is a jar of daffodils on
my kitchen sill. Still, I long for the white isolation of winter, for the cold,
for the sense that the world can wait, because it has to. Give me some pale green days of April. Don’t push me,
and I May. I love the sound of May. Full of possibility, no pressure. Just make
a choice or even choose not. May
gives you permission, like a door swinging wide.
The dog
barks, her beagle-bugle sounding the arrival of a large vibrating truck. The
floorboards in the bathroom quake; in the bedroom, the roaring continues
followed by monotonous back-up beeping. Then it starts: the drone of power
saws, a cartoon dentist drill amplified by a wall of speakers.
Obviously
our neighbors have a Spring project going on. I go to the cupboard for
ibuprofen to head off the migraine that’s creeping up my neck like a tight
hood. Light hurts my eyes. I wish I were a mole burrowed in the loamy quiet
ground, listening to a neighboring flower stretch itself cautiously, patiently
toward the sun.
cathy larson sky 2015
