It is too early and all of us are awake

Out my window is nothing but green. This being May, in the state whose primeval state is rainforest, there's green for a mile. Fifteen feet in the air, among the maples, blooms a single dark red rose.

It's a wild rose, left so long it's climbed the tree. When you glance, you think it's a hummingbird. It makes some mad sense, this one rose mysteriously high. Like theatre. Like a dream.

I am reading Chekhov. After years in his plays, I am reading his stories. They are more distilled than his plays, thick black-green syrup. It's like having a telescope to 1900 Russia. Here is a horse, legs stiff with cold, standing in the harness with snow piled on his back. Here is his taxi-man master, white-faced in a black coat, bent double on the wagon-seat, waiting for a fare. Snow lies on his back as thick as on the horse's. His son died this week.

A wild grey cat slinks onto the porch outside my window. He sits above the grasses, intent.

It is too early, and all of us are awake.