A Sunday Morning

Calm, serene, peaceful, tranquil, uneventful, desolate, deserted, empty, quiet, still, static, stagnant. Pathos pervades the atmosphere, the clock strikes noon, yet this bucolic side of town is not without vitality. A gentle breeze from the north carries the flowers from the Bradford pears like snowflakes to the deep green grass, occulted from the naked eye. Tulips line the edge of the center, circular garden bed, bright red and brilliant yellow. Leafcutter ants dot the sidewalk, inconspicuous in the breadth of the vast landscape. The streets are silent, taciturn, the homes uninhabited, abandoned, dead. The chipped paint and the straining planks a tribute to toil, the wandering words drifting through my mind one to tautology. Poignant, nostalgic, reminiscent memories float through time, space appears surreal, dimension retains no form or shape and begins to resemble a tesseract, tangible characteristics steadily disappear. Gravity capitulates, and for a few moments, the universe, still intact, lies prostrate, motionless, frozen. Introspection breeds doubt, questions, qualms, the use of singular indefinite nouns that have lost their amateur status to deduce broad, all-encompassing but often misleading, generalizations. Dreaming of another place, another time, counterfactual thinking overwhelming, curiosity overflowing, pressure suffocating. The eras begin to blur, all phenomenology and ontology a whirling, convoluted spiral, evocative of the Mandelbrot set, till time readopts its fleeting nature, the porch boards gradually reemerge, and the gentle back-and-forth motion of a rocking chair can once more be discerned.