Empty

The wind was blowing as the day began, gusts that rattled the leaves left over from last fall and rolled them from under the bushes. The sky was clear blue, empty, for a while, until clouds started scudding in. Soon it was a gray-white ceiling that felt .. empty. The weather was cold, with or without the sun. The wind continued.

I was born on the Great Plains, just on the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains. Sometimes it was hot, sometimes it was cold. It was always dry and windy. Powdery dust collected along window frames and crept under door sills. Coffee cooled fast in our tin cups, which was okay. It needed to be drunk quickly before a film of dust and wind-bits collected on it. In town, lawns were only green 3 months a year at most. Their normative state was a brown layer which crunched in the wind and under foot. Mowing neighbor’s lawns for spending money in the summer was less profitable than collecting empty pop bottles and turning them in at the store for 2 cents. Always, the empty prairie surrounding town cast an aura of emptiness blown in by the wind, owls, nighthawks and trains its voice at night. Occasionally coyote song at the edge of town. Empty.

Sixty years on from living on the prairie and I miss its emptiness. I left it. It didn’t leave me.

I wait to be empty again.

Blessings

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