Sunday Musings

Sunday morning. Grey sky, wet streets, stillness freezing the view outside my window. Only the slight tremble of a nearby branch reminds me it's real, not some painting I've hung on the wall. Of course, my inclination was to be more descriptive: overcast skies with the peculiar white brightness painting a uniform sheen, reflected in the sleek dampness of the pavement...but grey and wet seemed more direct, somehow.

My memory of Wallace Stevens' "Sunday Morning" holds little of the actual poem. Nursing a mug of cross-bred coffee (one half Kirkland brand with Starbucks -- extra bold African blend), smug and chocolaty and rounded, temperature perfect, mug ancient and cracked and full of memories, all hopeful and sunlit, I remember only what I want of the poem: a lazy Sunday morning in pajamas with streams of sunshine and a green cockatoo. A Sunday paper graces the floor and all is well with the world...

A steady drizzle mars the silver perfection of street puddles and the prickles add movement to an otherwise motionless scene. The very mundane nature of it enfolds me, gives joy, comfort, a sense of rightness in the world. I feel a connection to Stevens' poem.

I slip back to the computer, do a google search for "Sunday Morning." I'm better served by my memories, my flashes of dark hardwood floors, careless silks, slices of orange, feathers of green. Unbidden, a smile steals across my face and I click close the site. I return to my chair by the window, listening to "It feels just like it should" instead of Mozart, the rain increasing in tempo and intensity, a few birds finding their flitting way into the fine whip-like branches of the snowball tree that serves as wall and guard and art form and nurturer.

My husband sits nearby, his silence a blanket I hold close, his attention within the depths of some article. All is right in my world, this world unconnected to any other, common and unaffected and everyday, but certainly the best I've ever known.