Spring is a surgeon longed for . . . addressing a patient’s pain.
We sit in the waiting room bored by flipping through dog-eared winter days. The freshness of fine snow now a greenless gray.
There is a sound so silent only the thawing ground hears it. Coming up surely, proudly, defiantly — the green blades appear and winter begins her crying.
Oh she may howl and make us shiver when friendless she breaths her last.
Then the landscape morns as out of her death spring is born.
Our winter coats get pushed to the side — when the spring knives cut through — green wins more each day — our gardens become our recovery rooms.
She was just trying to help and I didn’t want it. Didn’t want her, didn’t want her at all.
Like a circle never wanting to be anything but a circle. Fond of feeling eccentric. Fighting her concentric concern.
Standing in front of the unoccupied McDonald’s counter with an automated kiosk screen behind me — in need of a small cup of coffee — I felt disordered.
She said I had to order from the automated ordering device.
She was there, I could see, to show me how to eliminate her job, how the latest know-how would allow me to not need anyone but me.
I told her I knew how but did not want to.
I told her how I wanted her, how I wanted her to take my order and she kindly said she could not.
But she did it anyway — the new way.
She touched the screen and started. I told her again I knew how. She smiled and touched the next screen; she was just trying to do her job and as she did, I saw her job slipping away and I saw me, next time, just me and the screen. No friendly face or finger to find the end screen where I could tap and pay and go away.
Next time just a self-circle. Then just me and the kiosk — coffeed and alone and then gone.
All I know now is that when I was encircled by her, I felt cared for, loved, and within some holy and unholy presence beyond me.
More than her. More than me. A human sacrificing itself to an inhuman future.
I missed her warm intention as soon as she moved to her next encircling concern.
