March

Drowning, drowning, we are, on the rainforest coast. Most days, the sky is gray, the trees are gray, the landscape two-dimensional. The rains are heavy, the earth like a sponge.

At noon, the sun broke through today. I walked along the river, cutting a wake between the million-dollar homes and the still brown water. Wind sifting through me, lifting me.

At the end of the day, the wind howled through my office cracks, pelting me with hail, sideways, putting the whole sopping mess on ice. I followed the storm after it passed, and the scenes were incredible.

Driving east along the rural flats, the radiant sun at my back, the saturated colours overwhelmed me. Row on row of colour: the crimson cranberry bog, a swatch of verdant grass, a fringe of golden bushes, all contrasted with the intensely blue-gray storm in the distance. And then suddenly an entire, uninterrupted rainbow on the plain.

Later driving along the highway under cumulus clouds in brilliant sun, straight toward the darkest of violet-gray clouds, the power lines and birds white against the sky. The trees radiant in their spring-like yellows and reds, just waiting to bring forth leaves.

Then suddenly I’m in the storm, driving on water, yet still illuminated by the sun. Another rainbow. I look for the end of it, and it’s on my car. What a crazy experience to take in this rainbow that is coming down on me.

Now it is cloudy again, and the trees are gray or dark green and two-dimensional again, and the cars are floating in a mist and heavy rain, and night is falling.