Soon It Will Be Warbler Season

Perhaps it’s the magnolias, with their hopelessly beautiful offerings, these early, delicate and fleshy flowers. The clouds of light pink trees. The agonizing gnaw of growth and opening. And of time, of course. I plucked a petal off the pavement and put it under a heavy volume of Schoenberg’s selected writings from the library to dry. The result will be nothing like the magic of that fragile petal, just as that petal itself was a poor substitute for the bursting tree from which it fell. But I hope in my collecting that the relic will conjure the heartbreaking wonder of looking up into those branches, rather than a disappointment at the simulacrum of spring or disgust for the husk, and the silly girl who tried to freeze a moment whose largest miracle was the frenzy of its impending expiration.