SHIFTS

Sometimes the days would be warm or warmish. Certain buds or strange feral plants would be trying to come up from under the flaxen fields or down beside the beautifully disorganized chaparral.  The old man, winter, seemed to have receded. Grey skies turned blue for long stretches of afternoon while the new birds made parts of a song and threw noises to one another and to the forest valley. But then in the distance, and this was often the case, - the white flecks could be seen. They would make everything around them opaque. Then, more of them. Before long, there was no other way to put it than a snowfall was occurring.

The buds and blossoms were forgotten about. The birds scurried here or there. It was in those days that it could be seen the birds were confused. A peace dove, alone, looking for something, wandering. Two loons crying out, - going back and forth across the horizon. Sometimes others…and the hawks, - more hawks, many more than usual- gliding ‘round the gray skies after the storms subsided. It was as if the birds, having come to see spring announce itself, were caught by the return of April’s winter. If they could speak what would they say?

Wind. Wind and sleet again. Caught in the far and far fields. There is an old fence that marks the line and perhaps marks time. Evergreens. What is it like there at night? Where are the coyote dens? It’s a good place for a shaman or medicine man to walk through. Ridges and bushes and various trees. Some seers might read the stones, the moss, the clouds, or the way branches fall after a storm or lightning or losing a fight with time. 

Yes, sometimes it could be warm or warmish. At those stretches if one waits, - a large bird, silhouetted for distance and sky, might come racing across the air with its catch in mouth, - going and going and going.

Where does it go?