top of page
Search
  • Writer's pictureAram Mitchell

a whiff of something

When I stepped outside this morning I lifted my chin and drew breath, like my dog just now in the side yard with her snout in the air catching a whiff of something. When I drew that breath I caught a smell, and for a moment, I was awake to an animal sort of knowledge. I could discern with a wink of sensation what sort of day it was going to be.

Today the wind will play among the tops of trees and circulate to the ground and begin to dry up some of the puddles pooled in the low spots in the lawn.

The trees will move with urgency. The trunks will sway. The limbs will wag and the needles on the conifers tussle against one another.

The wet on the ground will move, coaxed by the wind, toward the slow rhythms of evaporation.

I fell asleep last night feeling heavy about the world’s problems. I didn’t wake up with articulate answers. But I found a trustworthy wisdom in my body. The relationships between wind, water, trees, and flesh affirm the urgency I feel. They remind me also to breathe deep and honor the pace of things.

1 view0 comments

Recent Posts

See All

It’s autumn, and has been for who’s-to-say how many weeks. Fall first struck me this year at sixty miles per hour. I was driving the long waves of tree-lined interstate one day and started to notice t

There’s a place I’ve been going to the past couple of weeks. It’s a short drive on country roads to get there. There is a pond and trees and sky and a picnic table where I sit and take out my journal,

bottom of page