The World Tasted of Spring

I thought it might be because it actually was 60 degrees today and I was walking without a coat, and because it’s Imbolc, and you know how brains see what they expect to see.

It wasn’t, though.

It was the exact shade of blue in the sky about 20 degrees above the horizon.

The blue of a bird’s egg, the blue that whispers “somethingmore” and you don’t get to know what that more is yet but it’s alive in front of you and you can’t stop staring at it.

That damn sky was alive.

Right in that band, not the messy part pulling free of the tree branches and rooftops, not the bowl above me that was still thin and unconvinced.

Right between those, the blue had depth, it had promise, it had by gods rounded edges.

The sky does not normally have edges.

The little tumbles of gray and white drifting across that part had extra dimensions. They knew things the clouds up high didn’t know yet.

The clouds below them were still fighting with the chimney pots and radio towers, which would be distracting for anyone, right? We have to give those clouds some grace.

I’m amazed I didn’t fall on my face (which I have done, and it sucks exactly as much as you imagine) because I couldn’t stop looking up there, not quite believing I was really seeing this.

I checked with the trees, but they weren’t available for comment.

The grass didn’t know what I meant when I asked, and just like the horde of elementary schoolers that burst up onto the path at one point, they were full of their own chatter and importance.

In the human world these days, we suck at being delighted by the unknown.

We need to know right now and even then we’re almost certain to be behind the curve already (according to this bizarre trash fire we call modern culture.)

If we don’t know, that means something bad, nearly always.

If we’re being beckoned by something as-yet-unrevealed, it’s nearly always a sales pitch, some other humans trying to grab us by the anxiety and FOMO and plant their hook.

I want you to understand that the sky did not care how I felt about that birds’ egg promise blue.

It was perfectly indifferent, in the kindest way, to my astonishment.

I wanted, plaintively, to know MORE. To smell more than just that tiny waft of coming-to-life, to see what was around those rounded edges in that band of sky. To know if the grass was really greener than yesterday, or if my brain was just making shit up.

The sky had nothing more to say on the matter.

The grass, as previously established, took no notice of me at all.

And it was, actually and unexpectedly, delicious.