QUIET SKY

There might be an excuse for saying something, but I haven't found it. It's such a pleasant day. That's not it.

Weatherman Paul Deanno remarked a realism for Super Bowl fans: Sunday will be as warm as the first day of summer. February kazam! The Change makes for perfect conditions – no rain, plenty of sunshine, clear air, let the game begin!

The media have transformed our bay into a giant stadium. Homeless hopeless vacuumed off the streets of San Francisco. Private jets vie for parking space at SFO, $1,200 per night. The compost bird has returned, way early.

Something stirs imperceptibly, a truism to say it can't be known. Emotions are small birds that travel on the backs of whales and hippopotami, or the coal mine canary in its sequestered cage. The very impossibility of words makes them appropriate carriers, pigeons. Now we know what doves know, and how now adds to the alliteration. Anything, a toenail, might be a stand-in. Sunshine warms my feet.

There was no plan for this, so why not babble? Anyone swazed in Super Babble might empathize.

Unimaginably countless fossils have contributed to this moment. The sky rooaars with karma. When the leviathan has passed, a bevy of smaller prey chorus that distant turf, the sea. A familiar rumble rises above the tide – my neighbor's motorcycle.

The din becomes intolerable – ambulances, fire trucks, the ice cream cart that only blares on Sunday. As one of the famed three monkeys, I cover my ears. February 7, 75 degrees. Synesthesia. My feet are deafened. Defamed.

The perceptible world clamors for attention, but somehow the focus shifts. An X-ray machine with a mind of its own. Words might be glowing teeth that show up on Dr. Salem's computer screen – except how do I know exactly what they mean?

Something points beyond, from out of where shining white images appear. Something enjoyable stirs. No announcement is made. It will not be provable. As though that mattered. Teeth, words, motorcycles all have to live somewhere, so handily reduced to a Birdland street that ignores such arguments, that somehow slips out of focus.