21st Avenue Dawn on Sunday

written April 23, 2006




The grass hints at dew, a fuzziness about it, an occasional glint of a droplet reflecting the sun. Most of the lawns are scruffy, jagged. People are reluctant to get the mower out and start the ceaseless chore of mowing for the next six months. Shadows are long and stringy this time of day, when at last the sky is clear and the sun shines all the way in from Surrey, the Valley, that catchall for the smog of the city. Here the air is clean, the edges of the mountains clear and crisp against barely blue, almost white sky. The oaks on 20th, as I look north, are leafing out unevenly, some still twiggy and sparse, some quite covered in the olive colour of shiny new leaves. There’s the burnish of a short maple peeking through, over top of the brown box of a house across the street. A small magnolia, the kind with the big pink tulip flowers, is displaying perhaps its first blossoms ever, I can count three of them from here, competing with its own foliage. A tiny miniature red maple, glowing in this light, a rose bush (looks like my own is dead, without a sign of sprouts). The dew is already coming off John’s blue Honda; it’s wet on the top, but shiny dry patches are growing on the front, facing East. I know it would be chilly if I were to step out there. I would breathe deep and feel the cold air fill my lungs, down to my belly.