[1] #31: From the Rooftops

The view from my window this morning doesn't feel like the city I have become so accustomed to. There is a low-hanging fog blanket snuggling up to the lake and doing its best to white out the sky and erase the horizon. I can see only shadows of a tree line across the bay, grey on softer grey layers of a storybook silhouette. It is raining gently, misting everything with a melancholic wash, just heavy enough that certain spots on my bannister have collected enough water to drip. Drip. Not often, not when I'm looking, but from the corner of my eye as I write. I slept with my windows open last night so I could listen to the city and the smell of the rain has rolled inside to my bed.

I can hear the birds, now. It doesn't last long here, this peace; in an hour the pigeons will wake up and bully the songbirds to hush, but for this moment they have the stage. I want to join them. I soon will.

Because in one more day I will be leaving this place. 

And there are certain things I must do before I go.

So I went to my room and riffled through a package of papers I have kept since High School. I shouldn't still have them, but I do. I find the one I am looking for, return to my balcony and open the door to this costal scene before me. It is exactly what I imagine the east coast to feel like in the mornings. Reminiscent of Ireland, with its muted greys and crisp greens. 

"Cai dil gu la laddie, la laddie, sleep the stars away."

And sleep the moon, and sleep the dark. I usually reserve this piece for tall stairwells when the echos fill the space and magnify my melody like a choir, but this morning it was an obvious choice. Maybe my sixth-floor apartment wasn't the rooftop I once envisioned, but as I sang out, full and loud, I watched over my little North End neighbourhood as it stretched itself awake with a yawn. So many rooftops, so many homes, so many families, so many lives.

I hope I have touched a few.