Whist! Who treads there on darkened coffee mug rim, this falling autumnal morn? Who glittered the edge of table and utensil…scattered orange orchard dust over the heated cream? Why…’tis an autumn sprite, tripping lightly over a sunbeam…plummeting headfirst toward the steaming drink, catching herself as she totters at drink’s edge. With a shake of cinnamon wings, she hovers furiously, breathes in coffee heat and sighs.

Who is she? This yellow wisp of air…this willow snippet? Whist!…she sprinkles a warning that sounds like bells. ‘I am a most discouraged neighbor of winter past, Mr. Jack Frost…unruly imp who never stops to breathe in raspberry chocolate or to nestle over hearth and home. He is crackly and rude while freezing my reddy orange beams and purpled plum air with buckets of white frosting…that old Mr. Jack’.

With a shrug of shoulder and a hint of lemon curly swirl, she flutters off…disappears into the long sunbeam so dappled through curtain’s lace.

Soon…closer now than ever…the creamed edges of this mug shall no longer bathe in auburn light and dappled salmon, for one has glimpsed the nose of the sprite and her dimpled eyes as she heads southward for a season. Somewhere, lies under the memory of golden leaves…her only trace…the diamond glitter kicked loose from dancing shoes and nutmeg tresses, shed while gloaming over hot buttered toast on a window’s ledge.

Shhh…does one hear his clattering paint bucket and his raspy yell? His white spattered ladder is seen…folding over the garden fence…too soon, too soon. So let us snuggle down one and all…under the mug of warmth…just a minute longer with a dollop of cream and a hint of a dream and a smattering of spritely yellow glitter, warmed and sparkled…and fading downward into brown…

Summation of my week thus far: overheard in a Kindergarten class…’I’ve got shark nails’ (meaning sharp). With a third grader…’Could we have a salami in Rochester?’ (meaning Tsunami)…although with this district, all things are possible. I read in a note from a small second grader…’Dear Teacher…I want to try to do my best because I want to be god’ (good)…a very tall order indeed. Things to think about on a busy Monday…

I leave you to your planting and I will work with minds. Your finger nails and hands grime over with spring loam, cedar chips; your back bent against a chilly sun as the holes open up to receive new trees…drinking in fresh water and settling down again, taking root; eager to grow deeper into new land. The small trees belong there where planted and they feel it; they know it.

Meanwhile, I gather data. There are no roots on these bubble sheets; just numbers. There is no fertility here; just frustration. I do not labor in a correct space; a ripened field. My land is filled with boulders and crooked places and soil which suffers damage. You, on the other side of the city, work within a truer place; a cleared land. You labor in a field ripe for planting with the appropriate fruits and the right tools and the healed ground.

I am stuck. We are stuck. Mismatched standards and efforts and families and children; I am busy building a fence. I surround the yard with driven stakes and I fill the soil and rope in patches of grass and close off the yard from trespassing. But I forgot the seeds. We all forgot the seeds.

I stand and watch; waiting for something to grow. I wait for a long time. We will be waiting forever, I think.

I rest underneath the tree which you planted in the correct soil with the sharpened tools and the healthy seeds. I think about things as I sit below purple blossoms and fresh spring air; far from the heated room where they can not read and where the tools are dull and broken; the soil unwilling…

I don’t know that I could ever permanently settle in warmer climes. I’m too married to the snow; the way it blows and lies heavily on our spirits; the variances of grey and the third layer of wool; twinkling lights along the salted length of long and dangerous highways and the emotional adjustment we make to all of it. This seems my birthright somehow.

But just for a brief moment, while seated on the porch, watching an enormous bumblebee stagger through early spring air, and hearing distant thunder and smelling the rain before it lands…I remembered I had forgotten how sweet the summer was…

Meetings to discuss curriculum and standards…humanity’s attempt to nail jello to the wall…that which drains and eventually kills the spirit…

It is the loneliness of plans incomplete and the irritation of a hurried and vague day…but the grounding of the simple things…the run for groceries and gas, the quick dinner and the dodging of rain drops…the smaller things grant life…

In the month of May…as the full moon rises over fields of hay, yet unharvested…the air is pink with crabapple. And the dirt, the dirt layers upon layers of rocks…rising as waves…what will be hounded, thrown into piles or dragged away and buried?

And yet they rise…in the month of May…as the full moon settles over the Avenues…B, C and D at the crossroads of Saint Paul Boulevard and despair…the Flower City’s sorrow.

And the air, the endless river air, thick with heated cement and cooking oil and leftovers from the House of Mercy…rising waves…who will be hounded, thrown into piles or dragged away with memories buried?

And yet they rise…building a garden or a weapon…in the month of May.

‘So tell me where you live’. Arms start waving. ‘Okay Miss…so okay. You know the school right?’ ‘Yes, where we are standing and sitting right now’. ‘Yea, you know the other side…the side where you go out and there’s a park and you go this way?’ Arms wave madly in a straight ahead direction. ‘Yes, I think so, yes’. He continues. ‘Okay, so you go by the park…so you go this way, this way and then around the other way and then you, you see a red house and a car. And, and then you go right…you go right…(the student points fiercely toward the left)…and then, there’s a, a…what’s the name of that color? Oh, teal…that color. There’s a house there…teal…and…and a bush. There’s a bush there’. Silence.

I take a deep breath. ‘That’s where you live? By the bush?’ ‘Yes, yes…by the bush there’. I ask, ”Do you know the name of your street?’ Silence. ‘No, no’. ‘Any idea at all what the name of your street is?’ He shrugs. ‘No’. Silence. ‘But we’re moving soon, I think’. I look at him. ‘Do you know where you are moving? When you are moving?’ He shrugs again and shakes his head. ‘Oh no, Miss…I don’t know where I am moving and I don’t when I am moving’.

We both look at each other and laugh because what else can we do? Fourth grade is keeping us intolerably busy…

That pencil thin line between elegant and expensive…is miles wide.

And with my new Iphone…an official member of the world of ‘Iphone’…I have been dragged into the world of technology with a rotary phone in one hand and a book of poetry in the other…sail on.

Jury duty summons; I’m assured by phone that I must make a showing at Henrietta Town Court at 6pm. I show up 30 minutes early with all my required paperwork and manage almost immediately to trip over a police officer strapping a large gun while accompanying a girl in handcuffs.

I’m met at the door with a blank stare by a rather fierce looking court clerk who asks quite unwillingly if she can help me. ‘Doubtful’ I think to myself but refrain from saying so. I obligingly indicate my willingness to travel through the metal scanner but am informed I need to go around it. Upon doing so, I discover a clerk in the back who informs me that nothing is happening tonight but if I fill out my paperwork I can leave it with her and I will get credit. I hope she means cash, but I refrain from saying so. I hand in my paperwork and leave quietly.

I am still unsure as to what happened to the girl in handcuffs…

A little music, a little work, a bit of a softening shift in my mind…and I return to what was ‘then’…what used to be ‘now’. Jim Croce sings and I’m intently attached to the phrase ‘runnin shine out of Alabam…’

How might those words be explained to any friend of mine whose first language is not English? Doesn’t matter today. Not to me.

I’m resting in the ‘then’. A girl with long pigtails and pine tree sap in her hair…a long ago world in which there is no virus, the creak of the yellow bus sounds by the open window…lost faces…only dusty summer roads lie ahead…the late evening twang of tired crickets and the promise of the long July trek to Dakota territory…