It is Sunday night in our little
mesquite bosque. I grab a key lime soda from the fridge and find a chair on the
porch next to Megan. We can hear the highway up the hill behind the house but
the light of the setting sun and the breeze off the mountains – a breeze still
carrying the chill of last night’s snow – quiets the drone of traffic.
No gauzy film, billboard, corporate-sponsored
dreamscape, or media hype could capture this subtle shift of the season, this
last, cool, goodbye kiss of springtime that spills over and through us as we
sip drinks and make small talk.
Snowbirds, busy packing, worry what summer will do
to the garden, hastily apply lip-gloss, and stow golf carts. More of the desert
will be given to them next year, more water too. The lock snaps shut on the
hasp. Doors close. Engines whine, then fade into the distance.
The last of the snow runoff is
withdrawing back to the high country. Clear water still runs over the sand at
the foot of the mountains, but has disappeared just today here in the valley. I
followed it upstream as the mouth of our winter creek retreated, growing
silent, its piece said, overtaken by the thirsty sand.
Shadows lengthen. Trees have gone
opaque with blossom and leaf in this last week. I watch my wife read, study her
crossed legs, and wonder how many times I will see her again in a light like
this, a breeze like this, my shoes wet with the last drops of a vanishing
desert river. Once more? Twice? Not more than a few, if any.
The shadows overtake the light, and
the sounds of the highway come down to us, no longer held at bay by the breeze.
She gets up. It is too dark to read, and friends are coming over. I sit and
listen for the sounds of coyotes, somewhere.
