In the afternoon in the country on a Sunday in the summer driving from the city, we don’t even think to get out of the car to ask the cows how come they stare to understand the clouds, or answer why we couldn’t just run lightly out to fall in a field and live there forever. Our camera doesn’t click. We’re not used to it. If the car ever stops it would never start again. We’re afraid it might get a flat, these ancient country roads, and not even knowing where we are, for sure, nor even where spring is, for that matter. As though we were all confused. We are almost lost, are on the edge of falling somewhere outside ourselves. Which is what the sun would say, But we can’t see the shadow of the car, and the trees swaying lightly in their shadows, laughing with the wind, the country swirls about its very greenness, our tires seem to roll into every hole, the corners on these narrow roads come too fast and too close, the colors have secured meanings all their own. Sky would be screaming how very blue it is, if we could only hear. Time dissolves its own attention. It’s love that does it, although we don’t know it, living only in the city for so long, only the country makes us want to cry.
March 1972