The time of the almond tree

The time of the rain tree is not the time of the almond tree. While the rain trees are filling up their bare branches with a million fresh green leaves, their canopies thicker by the day, the almond trees are slowly turning golden-red and shedding their leaves, on the morning-walk streets. (You must someday speak to the road-sweepers, how intimately they must know each tree.)

And the mango trees have been abloom in their inconspicuous way since a while, their sharp fragrance exhuding promises of mangoes, their tanginess, followed by sweetness. The yellow jacaranda has begun to bloom all over the city last week. Soon they will make even the most insensitive person stop and stare. The dense cover of thick bunched-fist blooms on branches where the leaves have gracefully fallen, to make way for one brief glorious declaration of yellow.

And you, mute ghost, you walk among them, the only certainties in your world, while your fleeting fickle quicksilver seasons leave you dazed, afraid, the ground beneath your feet forever shifting.