This morning feels different outside. For the first time in a long while the outside temperature almost matches the inside temperature. Walking out on the back stoop, for the first time since spring, you are not slapped in the face with the heat.

While the coffee brewed, I reintroduced myself to the morning of my backyard.

It’s quite for 7am…It’s Sunday…Not many cars on the highway bypass just a quarter mile down the road. Tire sounds on the highway are muted. The weekday roar is absent. The constant kerplunk on the expansion joints down to just an occasional thump.

It’s quite also with few bird sounds this morning. Only the cawing of a few crows down in the woods along the bayou…A single “kree-ing” of a hawk on the wing…Not much else to be heard.

Even the dogs, rounding the house, are muted…They don’t jump up to greet me. They just sit and wait…Waiting to see if I will walk off down the trail to the woods…Not yet do I feel that call. Maybe later girls…

The house is quite yet. No one else is stirring. Coffee’s made. Smell of fresh coffee filters through the air…My wife wanders in…Pours two cups…Puts one down beside me and sits at her end of the table…She sips and glances at the thermometer on the shelf…”It’s only 74?” she asks in amazement…”Yes.” I answer…”It feels great out”…She takes her coffee and a cigarette and wanders out to the front porch…And again I am alone in the quite…With my muses.