At five this morning a pale wash of blue gray watercolored the eastern sky. A sparse scaffolding of cedar a couple blocks away, backlit by the dawn. Why had I not noticed it before?
Last night, waiting for my brother to arrive from New York, we sat in the back yard and watched the breeze rifle the fruit trees. The star magnolia, blasted brown and brittle by the heat and dry of a month ago, is putting out tentative new leaves. Becky brushed Zeke. He is sybaritic in his old age. He pressed his face into the lawn in an ecstacy of scratching. A white-tailed kite detoured from its hunt to examine us in the yard, peering down from its perch on a ridge of air.
