Monday 31 October 2016

Hawk's Scream

It's patio hot now in early November, or early summer? You wouldn't know. I'm tank top clad and stuffy with cough/cold, I can't even name the illness for the season: summer cold, fall cold...you just don't know. I look down on our neighborhood: bustling hive under the bleached-out sun. Artificial period. If you don't have to work today, you're having your coffee outside beside the construction site. It's heavy with dust and the noise assaults my senses- yet still they sit. Oblivious is bliss. I go out for groceries and walk by the work. I'm almost offended. The mid-day sun is too high and too hot for construction. In the summer it wouldn't matter, but this isn't summer. At work there is construction too, for months now the entire perimeter of the school has been ripped apart and now they use a massive drill, like they are extracting oil from the church. What ARE they doing? The children are so accustomed to playing in the sounds; sirens and diggers excite them, and they never know what to wear. Ragamuffins in the yard dressed in mismatched seasonal clothing shouting: "I'm too hot, can I take off my coat!?" At home, the restaurant across the street has a patio that has been packed every night since April with fire pits a blaze and the rockin' band til 11. From our apartment, it has become a silly masquerade...for the costumers, it's a great first time show. Business is booming. It has been the same line-up of songs for 8 months now. They are still out there, huddled around the fire. They will be out there until winter, I swear. I want to move to the country. I wait. I wait for hibernation. For the first time in my life, I'm settled into a nest of domesticated dreams and I agree with the cold. The muted colours comfort me. I love the muffled blankets of leaves and the soft-edged scenes. The air is too brisk to linger long and the snow will force us still. But now. Beautiful day, anyway, I suppose and it won't last long. Tune-in. Look around. Look at our paper-crisp, spring-potted grass and the bare-naked trees clinging to the last of their burnt-out leaves. Look up. Expansive blue beach-like sky. Listen. A cry? A hawk flies overhead, and swoops down so low I can see the opening of it's hard-beaked mouth. Fire engine-red calls over me and the scream echoes down the street.

I welcome its noise.



Lindsay Ronald

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