Angelus Novus

James Reidel 

The mild winter, the weak frosts, and an old, stale flu shot that still dispels the aches that flutter about my temples, the fits of it’s-nothing, my dizzy spells, and the like—they slackened the healthy fear of getting sick, that last fear on which today’s gods and empires would stand and fall. For the first time in years, there were no snow days nor any cancellations to heed any higher power than our own impulses. On the brown hillsides where the best sledding had always been in previous years, what good was that breakneck desire of the downhill run? When there was at last a dusting, every attempt suffered the halt of the exposed grass. What snow fell was barely worth the trouble of walking back to the top when it meant scooting like crabs all the way to the bottom again. And the tracks of our disappointment just scattered home, leaving trails of slush spots in the trampled turf. Sure, children still coughed and sneezed, but they did so into the crooks of bare arms instead of long sleeves. No one wears winter coats anymore—nor galoshes like they once did, with those black metal clasps found on no other footwear, which you had to press down with your thumb to stay put. Some of us, a dwindling few, an elephant’s memory really, will remember the pull-tabs, like hard light switches that bit the fingers, and the trouble they gave when you could just leave them all undone, with the black rubber uppers flapping as we ran to where we are now—to where there is no real effort to the season, no caveat, to where other things are taken seriously and no snow angel’s impression would like to stay.