the sky has begun to shift through the pre-dawn shades before 5am now, in early june. the
trees have already shed their nighttime anonymity, slipping into silhouettes.
lately the air is heavy and still and so profoundly midwestern; i live in the city but i picture this
same sky hanging over corn fields in acres of silence. there is the taste of incipience in the
air: storms are biding their time, murmuring to the clouds in peals of thunder, and summer
waits patiently for the cold season to sheath its endless claws.
soon the weather will turn, and all the pent-up sensuality will pour into these few months of
heat and life. festivals spring up on every street and infants open tiny fists to the first bright
rays of sunlight; the colors have moved from winter whitewash through the brief watercolors
of spring, and now the blues and greens and pinks are ready to erupt like a spilled crayola box,
glittering desperately in the face of autumn.
the inertia is cracking, and within a week or so it will break, and summer will fill the city with a
joy that borders on obscenity. but now it is soft and cool and quiet; the sky is aloofly grey and
the trees remain demure. in the distance the lake grumbles and splashes, waiting for its time
in the sun.