Proof

         A starry morning. 

    It had been a clear night, stars everywhere she looked, even when she went outside and lay on her back in the grass. It was cool, but she had dressed for the stars, long underwear from Calvin (no, not that Calvin), corduroys, then wind pants, a sweater, jacket, hat, the full winter outfit.

    So, she was warm and had lain there all night, sleeping and waking to see if the stars were still there. It was an experiment, a test, to see if the earth really moved, rotated, spun.

    Well, yes, she had to admit that something changed, moved....but was it the earth? The stars themselves?

    She had argued the point with Mr. P so many years ago, 8th grade science, physics with astronomy thrown in. "Because that's where science began on this spinning earth," according to Mr. P. "The whole universe rotates!"

    How could he know? Mr. P. a young first-year teacher, but he was so sure, the way men are, that she decided to test it.

    And now it was morning, 7:12 according to her smarter-than-you watch, 7:12 a.m. and the stars were leaving, blinking out, one by one, saying goodbye, farewell, proving Mr. P. right, she supposed. The stars did move. Or the earth? Or....?

    

    Ah! The engine of the universe moved, rotated, always, continuously, right now, and she had seen it, proven it to herself, which is what mattered the most. No need to mention it to Calvin.....or to anyone...

The Researcher

"Brewer's Blackbird--now there's a bird!"

"Meaning?"

"Well, look at it, standing tall, looking ahead, into the future, alert, stalwart."

"So?" 

He was excited, ready to drone on about a bird he'd never seen or heard of, the Bird a Day on the damn (sorry) Audubon calendar she'd given him for Christmas. She wouldn't make that mistake again. Yesterday, the American flamingo? She'd never heard of American flamingos, thought flamingos were more exotic, more foreign, but there they were in all their pink, bird-a-day glory--and as the weekend birds, so, of course, he talked of nothing else for two mornings in a row.

At least the Brewer's Blackbird was alone on the page, singular, and, from the look of it, (yes, she was forced to look at it), shy and embarrassed by all all the attention and, no doubt,  portrayed larger than life in the picture.

Well, she knew from experience that he'd soon wind down if she limited her response to an occasional nod, even as he continued to drone on about the odd name, Brewers, now wondering if the Brewers Blackbird was connected to brewing, to brews, was a bird that liked beer, that preferred beer over water!? 

"Now there's a bird!" he said, for the second time., and, predictably, wondered if it preferred an IPA over a stout...or, he said, "Probably a plain lager is good enough, do they even have tongues, a sense of taste..." and he was off, launched on his daily, deep dive into Google.

Brewer's Blackbird

Tis the Season

 

"We 

should 

get a tree

put up a tree."

"A tree? Why?" "Tis  

the season....almost 

the season.""Oh, that 

kind of tree, where we go 

into the woods, probably illegally

 because we don't own any woods, cut 

down a tree, a living tree that we have killed, 

a tree that will never grow another half inch, never 

have a bird nesting in its welcoming branches, never 

know the feel of a scampering squirrel ascending its heights, 

never . . . ""Point made. We'll get an artificial one instead.""Artificial! 

You mean a plastic tree. Do you have any idea how plastic is already 

suffocating our oceans, and you want a plastic tree!""Okay. Point made.

 So, let's 

just draw

 a tree.

 

Get a

 long roll of

 paper, compostable

paper," J says in a slightly (only slightly) 

louder voice, but still enthusiastic and hopeful.

 "We can tape ornaments, recycled ornaments, make 

paper chains to encircle it, create our own tradition, a tradition 

that will make our children proud.""But we don't have children," L says."

I know. That was just a figure of speech. I should have said, "Make those who 

come after us proud." J takes a breath, then a second breath, waiting, anticipating, 

L's response...scorn? speculation? relief? at the absence of children and L. is still quiet, 

which 

is unusual 

after one of 

J's statements. 

L 

stands 

there, smiling,

saying nothing as if J 

has made an obvious error, as if 

L knows something J doesn't, standing 

there with her hands on her waist, cradling 

her stomach, which J notices, might have a slight 

protrusion. L is waiting patiently now, unusually quiet, 

not holding up her end of the conversation, but smiling and

 her hands still holding  her stomach...or should he say uterus? J

 blushes, even stutters, "Are we . . . are you. . .? L nods."I vote for the 

paper tree, 

to, as you

 said, to make 

them proud."

All

    The wind blew all morning. She heard it in the trees, heard it unfold the shingles on the roof of the house, dropping them—flap, flap, flap. She heard it against the screen, saw the lines of snow splattered on the window, heard it sweep across the yard, saw it leave a vertical stripe of snow on the trunk of every tree trunk. It was an overwhelming, invisible presence--nothing was spared.

    She stood at the window with her back to the fire and watched the wind, smiled and watched. She was seeing something, watching something invisible, something that nobody could see, but was there, oh yes, it was there. 

    O wind, a-blowing all day long, she sang. "O wind, that sings so loud a song!"

    This wind held the trees, moved the whole trunk, not just the crown, and picked up snow from the frozen lake so by the time the wind reached her at the window, it was a screeching wall of white, a yowling wind, reveling in its very breath, the visible breath of its existence.

    “I felt you push, I heard you call,/I could not see yourself at all..."

    He didn't move, never glanced up from the crossword, never noticed that cosmic forces were shrieking for his attention.

    “It's a message from Jupiter,” she said, “or Uranus, one of the distant, frozen planets where ice and wind are everything. Look at it--it's the all!”

    “Awl?” he said, without looking up. “AWL--a pointed tool....just what I needed!”

    The wind tore off a branch of the ash tree and slammed it against the window. She couldn’t have said it better herself.

© 2024 Kathleen Coskran (citation from The Wind by Robert Louis Stevenson)