Pink Clouds

On my drive home this afternoon I saw two cardinals on the highway- two red splashes on a backdrop of summertime green- they raced each other along the highway stream. I thought of a nighttime swim, and the excitement of a new love, and moondancing soaking wet in the sand. Most of the drive was green and gold. Wheat fields and hay, an afternoon glow, and the wind blowing streams of hair across my eyes. I was already thinking of beautiful things, but that darting red made me think especially of love. I was in love right then.

Don't be scared if I tell you I'm in love with you right away. Sometimes I wonder if I fall in love every day. With boys and girls, by a look, a laugh. It always shocks me. Last week it happened with an old black man on a rusted bike. Before that, it was an artist in a rice field in Bali. I can be in love for as little as three minutes, for the length of a dance, or crossing a street when its not my turn. Yesterday, it happened when a three-legged black lab stopped and stared at me, huge glass-eyed, for an eternal second, then quickly loped off.

My windows were down as I passed the cardinals and I hoped to hear them. Sometimes every piece of me wants to feel such excitement, every sense needs that stimulation-not wanting to miss anything that makes me feel alive. But all I heard was the wind. What can be more present, more real than the wind? I felt an actual electrical current. Maybe it was the pink clouds in my rearview mirror, but something seemed on fire.