The dog is too busy sniffing frozen piss at the grassy base of a stop sign to notice the pastel swirls of cotton candy skies. The ground crunches underfoot. It’s frozen hard, and the irony of weather pits these soft tropical hues against a bitter cold that stings our cheeks and noses.

This is what happens when I don’t do this in the morning. I stare at the screen, unable to latch on to anything. The day has passed by unnoticed – nothing of consequence to remember or describe. I look at the dog. I look at the phone. Fifty-two words that feel miles away.

It’s cold and damp with a thick ceiling of gray. Lost in thought on a morning walk, the weather matches my brain. I can’t decide between past tense or future tense. The present only comes to me in revisions – a statement about writing and life. The ground has been soft for days.

A light snow falls. Small flakes trickle quick and steady. The snow sticks to the windshields of the cars. Soon it will stick everywhere. Soon it will slick everywhere. Inside, the coffee is still hot. The Christmas cactus continues its pink and white blooms exotic and tropical like orchids in Hawaiian leis.

The computer screen reflects the window scene behind me – a canvass painted solid blue edge to edge. A leafless tree with spindly branches fills the frame. The top of a pine pokes up checking to see if the coast is clear. For a moment, a squirrel swishes and twitches her bushy tail.

Oaks and maples stretch skyward – always reaching. Would it be wrong to call them aspirational? Are they bold and audacious in the way they claim their space? I admire softer things – willows and their modesty. They grow but droop – turning downward as if to reflect on that place from which they came.

For five minutes, certainly no more than ten, the sky near the horizon burned orange and pink with prismatic spring and hot pool shimmer. I’d like to stretch my writing and my observations beyond the morning sky or the sound of birds. Then again, there are worse ways to start the day.  

Wipe his mouth, wipe his feet, give treat… gentle. His teeth scrape my knuckle. Gentle! He waits and looks, looks and waits. A short command GO! and he bounds up the steps, trit trotting cloppity clop to the water bowl. He slurps. Emerging from the kitchen jowls dripping – he wants to play.

Cool and gray but not freezing, not frozen. Light rain peppers my hands and head. In a different setting it might be sand gently blowing on a beach. A small bird sings her morning song – an aria: sweeeeeet, swoot. Sweet. Sweet. I think Black-capped Chickadee. Like many things – I remain uncertain.