|
Most nights I sit in bed reading, the door open to the garden, the wetlands, the hills.
A part of me is pulled outside into the night by the concert at the pond. After the first big spring rain, it’s the Wagnerian chorus of a hundred voices, deafening and thrilling. We are ecstatic. We hold hands in the hot tub and recite:
Welcome back Herr Frosch
You wear your Macintosch
You’re looking mighty posh
Oh gosh, Herr Frosch
When the rains have stopped it’s the romantic orchestra with half the players, but there is still urgency in May. There is chirping and harping and trilling and piping. Repeat. Repeat with passion.
Then the pond begins to dry out. In June, a solo flute plays, pauses. Other soloists join in for a chamber concert, a trio, a quartet, filling the night with adventure and longing remembered. Sometimes the solo begins again, waits for another, calls, calls up I don’t know what lonely mood that I would like to fall asleep to. But sleep demands that I shut off my audio and shut out the night.
Now the night is empty, the pond far, unreachable. Every night I fall a little, as I put my book away, drop off my hearing aids, pull on my sleeping mask. Resentful like a child left out, no lullaby, I lie awake. My mind goes round and round. I’m getting old, Herr Frosch. Oh gosh.
|
Writings
