March Four O’clocks

Barn in Early March

It is a raw and windy day with four o’clock snow that isn’t sure if it’s snow or if it’s rain. Still I ventured out for a walk down Main Street past the houses all shuttered and silent, past the old weathered barns, the outbuildings, the side yards with the covered boats, down to the sea that today is the color of gull feathers and buried dreams.

March has entered with a roar.

Wearing a black wool coat, dark red muffler, sturdy boots, two pairs of gloves, and a wool hat that pulls down over my eyes, I decided to pretend I was in New York and opened a leopard-print umbrella to keep off the rain/snow mix.

It’s a stretch of the imagination to pretend to be in New York when I’m walking down the empty street that leads to the water. There is only the sound of the gusting wind and the sight of the pewter-gray ocean, only the snow falling in circles into the black puddles, only the crows cawing their late afternoon sojourn to the fading day. I try to picture the city with its bright windows and flashing cabs, its sounds of horns and subways, its crowded sidewalks, the lights coming on in the Empire State Building.

It’s a stretch all right.

But I’m happy to be walking here in silence, looking out under the leopard-print umbrella at the three colors of lichen on the ancient oaks, at the snow dripping from the delicate tips of the bare spirea hedges, at the shingled houses turned inward to ponder their empty state, at the way the wind has shaped the cedars.

Today, the four o’clocks are resting in peace.