Seeing Red

If I said – remembering in summer,
The cardinal’s sudden smudge of red
In the bare gray winter woods –

Robert Hass, “The Problem of Describing Color”

Yesterday’s weather was not a trend. Today the park had re-solidified into an icy labyrinth, with every path so slick at its center that walking in untrammeled snow was easier. Perhaps lulled by yesterday’s now-absent warmth, it was obvious I’d under-dressed. The wind cut right through my coat.

I saw more snowmen at the park than people. The silence was acute, like the inside of a bell. The late-afternoon light was stark, and glittered. And the cold was so sharp-edged, so crystalline, that it amplified the quiet. I couldn’t stay out for long.

I went down a side path in search of shelter from the wind and stumbled upon a splash of sudden red in the bushes. Three male cardinals and one female were roosting amid the twiggy profusion along with a small flock of sparrows and at least one mourning dove. E.’s camera doesn’t zoom, or I might have snapped a better picture. As it was I think I was lucky to see them: silence has its benefits.

And then, on my way back to the main thoroughfare from a short circuit through the woods, I saw another fortuitous rash of red, this time arrayed beneath a branch. A row of shelf fungi, baring their red bellies.

“Red, I said. Sudden, red.”