almond orchards

When you come visit me in January, before the spring is fully here, we will walk to the almond orchards. We will set out, one lazy, clear day, when the rain of the night before has washed the world clean and the air smells sweetly of rain and promises. We will walk past the school, while the sky is blue with full, white clouds, and cross the street. We will pass the strawberry stand, closed until the spring, with its hand painted signs, and neat fences supporting grapevines. We will pass the horses, and linger a moment to feed them carrots from our hand. We will walk past the new mown golden fields. The fields will be golden as never gold is, but should be. They will be golden yellow, with tinges of orange and red, glowing like the sunset or sunlight through water, golden like you only thought existed in your dreams. Underneath the gold they will be green, the new fresh green of new growth, reminding you that this gold is living gold. We will walk past the golden fields, you and I, and we will come to the almond orchards. The almond trees will be beautiful in their stark simplicity, with not a leaf to their name, but yet a hint about them that promises growth to come. We will walk past the sign that warns against trespassing, and wander along the neat rows. The branches will stand stark brown against the blue, blue sky, and a bird will be sitting on one of the branches, as perfect as a picture, but we will not have come to take pictures. We will lay on our backs in the dirt between the mounds that hold the almond trees, and we will watch the sky through the interlacing of almond branches. The cars driving past will seem impossibly far away; distant, belonging to another world. We will lay there and talk of nothing and anything, tracing shapes in the branches and clouds, until the cool damp soaks through to our backs, and we shiver from the cold. Then we will leave the almond orchards, feeling a little stiff and a bit sore from the inevitable rocks. You will love the almond orchards when you come to visit me in January, when the spring is not yet come.