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.

I step and the frozen ground crunches. The puddles in the drive have iced over. Even the light in the morning sky looks cold and icy blue – the air too thin to hold much more than a few wisps of clouds, gauzy apparitions, translucent. A plane slowly chalks a line heading north.

Silence (almost). The fridge hums a little whir and the electric burners on the flat, glass-top stove cycle on and off – click (silence, pause, breath) click. The big pan sizzles when the teardrop of batter flattens then bubbles, flips and browns. The coffee belches and sighs – too early to be that tired.

The sun peeks through the marble gray and quickly slinks back into hiding. There’s a squinting brightness to the day, a washed-out light that almost hurts. On the thin-limbed end of the barren maple tree, two clusters of helicopters dangle and sway in the wind – a small sign of determined resilience.