The Narrative Image

It had now been absent for nearly half a year after leading the birds south last autumn for their annual hiatus. I hadn’t noticed it was coming back because the clouds conspired to hide it – tried to create an impenetrable gray blanket of depression – tried to cover the earth in a glaze of freezing rain and sleet, like a giant black slug. But nearly two weeks ago, I stepped out of a soul-killing windowless concrete-slab work-box to wash off the stink of my own nervous sweat in the face of a bracing wind that I remembered from the morning and which I knew carried stinging rain in a horizontal fashion. Instead, the world of gray was vanquished - the gloomy cover shattered –rays of golden sunshine, like rescue searchlights actively seeking abandoned children – warmly touched my face – dried my clammy skin – whispered promises of summer. I went back inside to tell the others. It’s come back! Winter is over! (The sun - It told me! I felt it!) By the time they went to look, it was ...