Blue days

I am so used to seeing dogs on leashes with their owners following behind or to the side with plastic bags around their hands to scoop up the droppings. Not today. A beautiful two-year-old German Shepherd found a little square of ragged yellow-brown grass at the corner across the street, turned, assumed the tail-up position and let nature run its course. He took a quick sniff and bounded across the street. I watched for his owner to scoop the proof but all that followed was a black mutt with a white blaze on his nose, bounding across the street like an excited puppy seeing his family in the doorway. The evidence the dogs existed is still across the street in the little pie slice of green and brown surrounding by cement curbing. I can just hear the buzzing of interested flies in between the trilled warbles of bird song drifting through my window on the rising breeze. The sky is an impossible heart wrenching Colorado blue where the bare trees scratch the air with skeletal fingered twigs.

The weather has been beautiful the past few days and every time I look out the window I expect to see green buds lining the twiggy ends of tree branches just like the bright green spears of crocus and tulips thrusting up through the black soil in the yard downstairs. The grass is brown, but the promise of spring and the end of winter's sleep is in those bright green spears ripping through the cold and silent ground.

There is the faint scent of dust on the wind mingling with the clean fresh scent of rushing breezes busily sweeping streets and windows and air and my mind clear of winter's must and dust. I am anxious for more of these beautiful bright blue days but I know winter is struggling with spring and winter will win a few more bouts before spring's pastel flags and green spears are victorious. The mountain outside my window will be softened and shadowed by buds and leaves before long, but like the impossible blue Colorado sky it will remain a constant reminder of the strength and beauty right outside my door beckoning me ever closer.