6 April 2016
North Miami
I walk to the gym in North Miami and these trumpet trees are dropping their yellow leaves and it keeps reminding me of late October in the Midwest or New England. Or the cottonwoods and aspens out West, which are exactly yellow. Yet it’s blazing spring in South Florida.
Falling leaves up in the colder parts of the country always come with a year winding down and your thoughts about how another year is passing. You wonder what you missed, as the dry leaves curl up, rattle on the pavement, and the bare tree branches scratch against cloudy skies like cemetery yards.
Chill wind.
© J. Manos
On some of the oldest trees up in the Midwest, the oaks and maples and hickories, you may notice a few human lifetimes in their roots, born when the American land had not too long ago been taken from wilderness to settlement. All the death – and life – between.
As I walked down this street path over dry fallen spring flowers, which would bear the bright sun the moment the clouds passed, it occurred to me that some people who had always lived in the American tropics would have a reverse reaction to what we have in the autumn-cold, deciduous parts of the country.
Dry falling flowers not leaves off just-bloomed trumpet trees blooding hot the spring. The days are light later. People are horny and playing their music. Your own body and life is ready for the heat and heart of the new year. This is it now.
© J. Manos