Before the Bugs Hit

June 1 2020

A hot day

in early May,

after the thaw

but before the bugs hit.

When it could be paradise.

When you can step outside, still in your slippers

and however little you wore to bed

and feel the sun on your skin,

fish-belly white

after a long hard winter.

A lazy heat

that purifies and penetrates.

A slow start

to a wasted day

that feels more priceless than squandered.

The sky seems made of light,

that radiant blue, washed clean

you only see in spring.

When the dry brown grass

has a touch of green

where the shadows have receded.

And the first intrepid buds

have split at their seams,

revealing tightly furled leaves

that nest like tiny emeralds.

While nascent shoots are poking up

despite the risk of frost.

Squirrels chatter

and the early birds sing.

Which isn't singing at all

but calls of aggression

and shrill displays of fitness.

The male imperative,

as if territory and sex

were all there is.

My virgin skin

is starting to burn

and I might as well be snow-blind,

even through the red-tinged haze

of tightly shut lids.

In my forbidden garden

of earthly delights

I wonder if Eden ended this way.

After an unforgiving winter,

but before the plague

of locusts, insects, frogs

a temperamental God.

The sun

rocks me gently to sleep

cradled in its heat.

I have lost track of time

all deadlines have expired.

Sound recedes.

The celestial blue deepens.

And the grass imperceptibly greens,

in the life-giving light

that comes to all

free of fear or favour.

I sleep on the ground floor of a back-split, and can step directly out from my basement bedroom onto a large (and very private!) back deck. How luxurious this feels in early spring. When all the snow has melted and the deck is dry, a high sun is radiating out all this unaccustomed heat, and it's bug free: that priceless interregnum before the blackflies and mosquitoes hit. So I can pad about in my pyjamas and bare feet or slippers; or strip down, and soak up some welcome rays. The heat penetrates. It's delightfully soporific. You lose track of time.

We tend to value what we measure, so maybe we shouldn't measure time so assiduously. Unstructured time is not time wasted. It's the opposite. This is when we can introspect, retrospect, and ruminate. When we can be creative and thoughtful. When we can be at our best.

So instead of rushing off to the next scheduled activity, we'd be better off moving through the world like flaneurs strolling through Paris: free, unconstrained, unrushed.