Open Windows

Sometimes, a writer just needs to flex her muscles, so to speak. This piece was that opportunity for me. What is the sound of spring? What is the feel of her? I had fun! Shaping words to life is a beautiful pastime. Hope you enjoy!
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Out on the prairie, over the hill, Spring screamed herself raw - shrieked like a wild, untamed thing, a banshee - and finally sailed into the valley and set the shutters banging on the close, huddled houses, so that the townspeople roused, checked their weather radios, called the dogs in.
By mid-morning, the sky was purple, and hectic with the energy of a tempestuous child, clouds drifting like bits of ragged gauze - and the windows on the houses stayed closed until the rain had passed.
But then.
Then came a noise made up of water-rush and bird calls and breezes pushing old dead leaves aside. A song like an old swing melody picked tenderly on banjo strings. And the people opened windows to listen and . . . there. There was the sound of Spring.
A hundred windows opening at once.
Every door that Winter had closed bursting at the hinges, all the shutters flung wide and every bit of Winter’s trash pushed to the curb. Sadness, anger, darkness, despair balled up like last week’s newspaper and tossed to the wind. Hopelessness, heartache, begone!
Robins tugged at earthworms, children found their ball bats, old men warmed their tired bones on front porch stoops. Firemen washed their trucks, bartenders bought a round for the house, the local priest played hopscotch with the first communicants. And everyone, everyone remembered.
Remembered light and love and happiness.
And the energy of their remembering lifted all that joy upward, and out, and it rained back down on them, benevolent as sunshine, warm enough to bathe in. Because that is, of course, the nature of happiness, and love – it spreads, it gets larger until all the cold gray stuff is gone.
Every window open.
Shutters making a joyful, banging racket in the wind.

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