Spring

The Bells

78 The Bells The bells for the hours have not been ringing lately. It’s been weeks since I heard them, but only a day since I noticed, suddenly, that extended absence, that blank stretching backwards through the month like a long, lustreless carpet I had already been walking, mindless with my own humming. Jon thinks perhaps some mechanical thing has gone wrong in the tower. The roof underneath is continually in shambles. The yard is Ālled with scrap debris among which anonymous people sometimes rake. The oversized terra cotta pots brim with dead marigolds. Perhaps someone will launch a campaign to raise money to repair the bells, so all of us can know again just how much time has passed, how many hours we have squandered, and how many we still have left, God willing, to make up for it. Meanwhile, a baby bird fell from somewhere high, and died against the silver cargo wall of Jon’s pickup truck. Its body remained stuck there, its tiny immature wings splayed out, its reptilian skin, its swollen blue eyes with transparent lids slit over the bulging. One day when I came to the truck, all that was left of the bird was its skeleton and some membrane webbing the bones— The bones: exquisitely thin and perfectly placed, like an ancient 79 imported lace from the holds of some incredible vessel, Roman corbita Ālled with silks and gems and spices— I wish I knew how much time it had taken for the body to reach this stage of arrangement. Then one day at the truck, just a few bones jutted at odd divergent angles, a gutted castle. Later I came back and all of the bird was gone. I didn’t see it go. It must have blown away while we were driving like so much dust. ...