branches

It's been awhile since I dreamt of apocalypse, though I always know it's lurking out there somewhere in the dark.  (The stories I tell myself, the stories of myself that I have for so long been telling everyone else, seem too often to revolve around the world as we know it coming to an end.)

Last night's dream, ridiculously enough, was about Thanksgiving. Specifically it was about an anxiety-filled last-minute afternoon of preparing shopping lists and going to the grocery store only to find that we couldn't get enough food. We didn't have the right IDs, the right stamps, the right paperwork in the face of massive food shortages to get what we needed, and our Thanksgiving was ruined.

I woke up frustrated and hungry and sad, got up and pulled on my jogging clothes and sneakers. I did a few stretches and went for my thrice-weekly walk/jog, and the sun was just coming up and making the very tops of the trees glow.

And it occurred to me, as I lumbered along with my face tilted up at the slowly lightening sky, that I've become somewhat obsessed these past few months with a certain stretch of boulevard in my neighborhood. I go out of my way to walk this stretch because there is something completely enchanting about these particular branches so delicately etched against this particular expanse of ever-changing  sky. Almost inevitably I find myself staring so intently upwards that at some point I trip and stumble and nearly come tumbling down.

It's worth it though, every morning, to feel washed clean by this little stretch of road. To feel so far from the city, so far from my dreams, perched on the edge of the river beneath these trees, beneath this field of sky.