Drifting Dogwood Petals

Drifting Dogwood Petals

s.l. Gilbert

waiting to sail upon the perfect breeze.

Another petal landed on the stoop.

The dogwoods swayed slowly, bending to the front porch to watch the next cascade of white blossoms float across the lawn. 

A chickadee pounced on an unsuspecting bug, and just as quick he flew his catch back through the whiteout of petals, disappearing up in the canopy of green.

The old crimson path from the mailbox would soon be swept clean for the second time this morning, mindfully, as if each brick was sacred.

Mrs. Adams sat rigid on the straight back porch chair, her back not touching the spartan support available. She stared at the pollen-covered deck. The high-gloss gray was again powdered over, with the fine yellow rights of spring. So to, the porch swing, the rockers and the railing. 

Mrs. Adams didn’t notice the robins on the lawn, or the mockingbird’s morning tribute. She didn’t see the squirrel heading to the telephone pole along the house line. See didn’t see Robby wave as he peddled his tricycle to the corner, nor Winker, the old mutt leading him nose low, tail high. Mrs. Adams was looking, and listening hard, but she wasn’t present; She watched a few random moments waft in. She was captured, taken somewhere in a distant time, again floating around the gift of her own experience. 

To most passers-by she was all but invisible. With her brown eyes glassy, cast towards the porch deck, she was frozen, waiting, like a blue heron fishing for something in her backwaters. Mrs. Adams was presently absent in her long, blink-less drift.

It’s a beautiful porch on a tidy clapboard cottage.  Cream yellow with white trim. The stoop is only three steps; but they’re wide, deep steps. Flanked by mossy urns spilling with geraniums, the deep treads hosted many a clay pot, bucket, and bum.  Decades of kids came and went. And many summertime lunches and homemade popsicles met their fate on this stoop. 

If you could just replay the sounds stored in the worn tongue and groove decking, you’d recognize shortly what season, or year, it might be. The noise being of school shoes, gym shoes, and bare feet; always accompanied by the toenails of a wet-nosed tail-wagger. 

Mrs. Adams porch is old and wise and a place well traveled.  And still well tended. It is usually ready for unexpected company these days, but, hopeful as that may be, there are mighty few who are near, or even still here. Nevertheless, she still borders the azaleas every year, with salmon-hued impatiens. 

Maybe as she sits, she’s thinking about her once little girl, Mary, singing about moonbeams and swinging on a star, to no one in particular.

Or perhaps Mrs. Adams is thinking about Kent, her other child …and how Mary shared her jar of pill bugs. Pill bugs that the children seemed to find every other day, under every other stone in every corner of the yard.

Perhaps Mrs. Adams is listening to Kent crawling under the azaleas, following the dog, following the neighbor’s cat.

Or perhaps, she is listening to her husband, again scolding the children about the sticky mess they made:

“…every shuga ant in tarenation is on my porch!”

Time is a mystery. It seems ever more so when that unblinking memory unfolds right in front of our eyes. The memory soaks us, and removes the bodies’ driver from the present, yet the clock seems to leap forward while we inspect every angle, sense, and emotion.

Maybe Mrs. Adams is thinking why people these days are too busy to walk, or even say hello. 

Maybe she’s wondering why Kent stayed in Vietnam.

The sound of a freight whistle cut into her reflection. It was as if a new partner was nudging, seeking her embrace on the dance floor… the whistle sounded again and with it came the lost echoing bell of that old streamliner, as it approached with a line of Pullman cars.

A little girl is waiting trackside; she is at the depot, in her Summer Sunday best.

The black porters, in unison with the conductor, step from the slowing cars.

Into the hissing, sunlit vapors, black-capped men set foot stools, and with gloved hands,

they guide passengers gracefully onto the ground.

“My, my,” Mrs. Adams heard her grand pappy call, “there’s my angel honey bunch!”

And then, that one dogwood petal crossed her gaze.

Landing on the porch in a bit of a tumble, it twisted a telltale track across the fine powder before she snapped back.

She took a small breath, then smoothed out her wrinkle- free apron.

She stood slowly, summed up the task, and gathered the straw broom from the corner.

Mrs. Adams stepped down off the porch for the second time this morning, 

to sweep the brick path to her home.

The memories of a once vibrant community have again, been adorned with dogwood petals, and pollen, and again, the aging boards must be dutifully kept clean. 

Some one might stop by and step up on the porch,

just to sit a spell.