Words jump like Mexican beans around the inside of my head all day; most of them dry up and lie twitching long before I have any chance to let them out, let them live, set them free. I would think that my brain must be full of the desiccated husks of thoughts that never became words, words that were never used, ideas that sprouted but alas, died on the vine. Each morning seems, however, to start fresh, a fertile ground for new, tiny germs of big ideas, polysyllabic words, sounds, fragments of song; a veritable plethora of images imprinted on the backdrop of memory.
Across the pattern of days, dreams and plans and endeavors meander. Some, pinned like insects to reminder notes and lists, flutter restlessly until forcibly, and sometimes reluctantly, removed. Thoughts of this and that and the other. Thoughts of you, and of me. Words that loom and hiss and mutter. Some so loud they rumble like thunder: DO THIS! WRITE THIS DOWN! DON’T FORGET! and others so shy and retiring they get swept aside with the merest breeze of distraction, never to be heard from again.
Lost thoughts. Lost words. Lost posts and essays and poems. The snapshots I took only with my eyes; the amusement that went unshared; the dialog that snapped into the air and dissipated wordlessly.
Before my evening walk, cloud cover rolled in slowly over the sunset, smothering the blue of the sky in gray cotton batting. Sunset glimmers of pink and purple and orange lit the edges of the clouds and here and there rays of light shot through and stood like the fingers of an outstretched hand, reaching down to earth. Other edges lit with silver as the sun went down: trim on houses, a chimney, cumulonimbus formations. The air was so still it might be have been bottled. Breathe deep, breathe in. Now it’s night and the moon is up, silver too, and full. Still the air is, still.
*Title from a line by William Shakespeare