Yesterday morning I got up and took my dog for his usual early morning walk. I noticed right away a profusion of small pink petals along either side of my street. This seemed a little surprising. I was pretty certain that what I was seeing had come from a flowering cherry-almond tree. The nearest one is at the top of the street, not close to my house. They are just beginning to bloom so it seemed unlikely that the blossoms would have shattered and been carried in the rain wash down the street. As I continued walking, the petals grew thicker and their were occasional full blossoms as if snatched from the tree and cast down, though I was nowhere near the tree. By the time I reached the summit of the hill, I could see the cherry-almond and a significant mass of whole blossoms as well as a carpet of pink petals on the street underneath. Cars drove through the flowers and petals, drawing them along in their invisible wake of air currents. I found myself thinking of Palm Sunday. Only it was Wednesday and these weren't palm leaves. These were frilly blossoms and petals. An image overlaid itself with the actual one in front of me. Dusty dry hot roads in ancient times covered by exotic palm leaves. And an ordinary asphalt street in a suburban neighborhood littered with flowers. The contrasts were mentally satisfying.
Late in the afternoon, as I sat at my computer working, the power went out. I lost what I'd been working on. The power surged back on and sputtered off again. On and off and on and finally...off. Though our neighborhood is pretty quiet and suburban, much of this area is surrounded by fairly busy roads. I assumed that someone had wrecked into a phone pole and that that probably accounted for our power outage.
My oldest daughter had decided we ought to have sub sandwiches for dinner. We've discovered that Publix (a grocery chain here, maybe nationwide) makes the sub sandwiches we like best. So she and I got in the car to fetch home our dinner.
Near my home, there is an area I think of as a kind of swamp. I always like arriving at this open area of sky and water. There is a traffic light that is slow to change right where this wetland is. I have quite awhile to look. The swamp, such as it is, lies alongside railroad tracks. I have walked the tracks a number of times and know that the swamp is actually the result of beavers who've gnawed down many trees and dammed up a little creek. The result is an extensively flooded area that the beavers live in comfortably. From my car, I can see a large pile of logs, home to the beavers. My walks in this area have allowed me also to see the occasional muskrat. And from my car, I sometimes see a kingfisher peering intently into the water below, from its perch on the wires that tether phone poles together. In fact, not only do phone poles cross this flooded area, but also the high power lines. The sort that carry very high voltage long distances and that crackle and hum when you are close enough to hear.
So that is the general scene I was approaching on my way to Publix. And I looked forward to it as always. But as we approached, we were looking at something quite unexpected. Straight ahead in the middle of the flooded area, one of the phone poles was on fire. Not little flames. A great, blazing fire, right at the top. The current top, that is. For I could see the rest of the top of the phone pole down in the water. A fire truck was parked on the street as were two Georgia Power trucks. Firemen and linemen (or should it be firepeople and linepeople? I like these words better. They make more interesting images to my mind's eye) were standing at a respectful distance, heads back, looking at the blaze and smoke. I suppose this was the source of our power loss. But what, I have wondered, caused this? No lightning. No small planes or helicopters seemed to have tangled with power lines or phone poles. These images remain--a fire atop a pole and men keeping their distance-- calm water and the horizontal cross-piece half-submerged. My mind switches back and forth between my asphalt street prepared for Cherry-Almond Wednesday and of this suburban phone pole cross, apparently burned in two.
Here in Atlanta, we are nearing the crest of the communion of flowers this city offers during the spring. The dogwoods are now almost fully opened, lacy, with the feel of a Japanese landscape. With many of the larger trees still on the leafless side, the dogwoods in bloom always make me aware of visual depths. I can look through the denseness of trees and see whiteness of dogwoods. Once trees leaf out completely, all of that will be lost and will become a seemingly impenetrable mass. Banks of azaleas are in bloom as well, so brilliant in their concentration of color, lacking in any subtlety. And wisteria vines grope their way around and up trees, across whatever happens to be in their path, winding lavender bundles of flowers. The air is filled with the earthy aroma of the entirely unremarkable (to look at) flowers of holly bushes in bloom. And here in my own yard, my Don Juan climbing rose bush makes his lusty and robust way across the front of my house, heavy with a bevy of maiden buds ripe for his plucking.