Lament :: Personal Narrative Writing

dirgeI have matured, and, at the proper time, the winnower will come for me. I will be ready. I have cast off my semen into the rich humus born of past generations. It has taken root, and now sings its avouch Song of SpringWhere are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,-- John Keats, To AutumnIt is fitting on this day of cold bluster and unsentimental sunlight to write of endings. Spring, so late past, seems a dream. Was it so long ago that I, like spring, burst onto the diorama? The faces and days of my youth are veiled within the mist of memory, exactly not beyond my reach. I inhale and the aroma of lilacs engulfs me, just as they encircled my house. A sister is born she is named June Iris, but she has arrived too early on in April. She is carried home in her namesake month. My mother places her in the sunlight that leaks among our drapes. We have to be quiet she is sleeping. . . . In an instant I am riding my bicycle beneath th e elms whose branches rise to the sky like the jump ceiling of a cathedral. Lining my street, they provide a cool rilievo from the relentless heat of a Midwestern sun. The orb drifts over, shifting the patterns of polish and light as though it were setting designs in stained glass. sometimes with a friend, but more often alone, I gallop my two-wheel steed up and down the block. Obsessed with horses and the westerns on television, I have no need for companions to challenge my imagination and diminish the enjoyment. In pretend, I chicane away the days of girlhood that reach to a future I never consider. I try to recall the sounds. The birds sang, Im certain. sure there were the shouts that accompanied the games. But there is no music in my reverie, no sound to break the white silence. Like the caterpillar in its cocoon, Im insulated within myself. The Wind. I remember the wind as it rushed through the elms, ruffling the branches or swirling them in circles. I turn and am standing in the picture window that looked out upon our street. The sky is achromatic green. The trees shift violently from side to side. I watch, oblivious to the potential risk of exposure of a breakaway limb, mesmerized by the dance before me.