MindSpinner

When Katrina moved inland and northward, no longer a hurricane but just a lot of rain, a truck making the circle in our cul de sac veered up over the curb and into my yard at an angle, rolling forward for some 20 feet until its front right wheel reached the sidewalk. The wheel left a rut more than six inches deep in sod so water-logged I might have wrung it out like a sponge.

I have not filled in the rut with new sod - other tasks have always seemed more important whenever tasks are to be weighed, prioritized, and completed. I’ve also been annoyed at the thought of having to buy dirt to fill the rut - several bags’ worth - and seed to sow it. I had enough to contend with already. I’ve resisted the job in a way I would not have had done if I had made the rut myself.

But just now when I look out my window at the blue-purple shadow bissecting the straw-colored grass, the shadow begins to speak of something other than a careless jerk in a truck mucking up my front yard. It is even mum about its rightful spot on the to-do list. Instead it traces as with a careful finger some memorial lesson about what negligence and nature can bring about together whether in an unfortunate city or a soggy front yard. Just now, the rut, my rut, does not need filling up and paving over. It needs to be the blue-purple shadow in the straw-colored grass before the green comes back. When it wants to be something else, it will tell me so.