Cineraria.

                 The word was in my dream. Had I heard it before? I hadn’t a clue what it meant – a female reproductive organ, my dream decided. From ash, most likely, etymologically – “cine” as in incinerate, not as in “cinema,” a more recent coinage, from the Greek “kine”, as in kinetic. My dream fondled the word curiously, concocting a plot about its removal (routine surgery, like an appendectomy). While immersed in these speculations, Henry indicated with a paw he was ready for breakfast.  Henry does not sleep in. When it’s dark, he drapes limp from his favored chair, but once daylight slices past the blind, get out of his way.

                  Dishwasher emptied, coffee brewed, I stood gazing at our field, thinking of what? There was Henry chasing, first, deer, then wild turkeys with indignant importance. Didn’t they know this was his field! Sedum and goldenrod noisily foretold the end of summer, each genus at its appointed pace. How did nature know how to be?

                  I sipped my coffee, gazing without thinking. A “brown study” such abstractions used to be called, but seldom today. To deploy that phrase – aloud or on the page – would mark me old-fashioned, bookish. Who these days has time for brown studies? And why brown?

                  How I love this hour! The hush. Jane still asleep. No traffic yet, no engines. The clink of the icemaker whelping. My eyes rinsing from themselves the grit of sleep. Henry, back at my feet, imploring more breakfast with his big brown eyes. He has had enough breakfast – he and I are on a slimming regimen – but he has my number. Those eyes!

                  Words await. I think of them rousing, stretching, yawning, in their dormitory. Time to get to work. Cineraria. Was it a word at all or my concoction? Do you know? As soon as I settle onto my work-bed I must look it up. Where, if the word existed, had I glimpsed it? And if not, explain this neologism. Our brains do nothing for no reason. What was that Pascal quote – the mind has a mind of its own – words to that effect?  But who knows their mind! We must use our minds to read our minds. It’s complicated.

                  I wonder what, in a few minutes, laptop flipped open, I’ll write about. I slept well, a subject will suggest itself, but what? It amuses me waiting for my mind to make up its mind. I can feel my mind, huddled in its dingy study (a “brown study”?), grumpily dismissing all the headline topics. Six months ago, who’d ever hear of Hormuz? And spare me another photo of Natalie Harpy or Epstein’s grin. And Epstein’s girlfriend, with that unspellable name – Ghislaine – French – but wasn’t her father Czech?

                  Everybody and their uncle harrumphs about the scandals du jour. Enough! Are people worse or just what we report about them? Harrumph is another of those words, like brown study, you don’t hear much. Who has time to harrumph? We groan, moan, shriek –  quicker words of one syllable. Harrumph has almost three, with that closing diphthong. Diphthong – sounds like somewhere in Vietnam.

                  Enough lollygagging – dithering – dillydallying. (Why so many silly synonyms for postponement?) But who or what decrees enough? In my career years, I had meetings, but now? I could pause here an hour and none the wiser. “But I have promises to keep” – like Robert Frost in that magnificent poem. (What makes it – or any poem – magnificent?) Promises to whom? Why not play hooky, skip missive-making for once? Would the world come to an end?

                  The thought – of no missive – mission – spooks me to work.

                  Cineraria.