Arrangement in gray and black

No snow in the forecast this morning and yet there it was all over the road and getting thicker by the minute. 

The sky was black. The snow was white. The road was shades of gray.

Yesterday I attended an event for which the invitation specifically called for "professional attire," but jeans and boots and sweaters were the order of the day. Only a fool would wear a skirt and heels when the parking lots are dotted with icy spots and hard chunks of snow, and road salt walks into the building on all our shoes, dulling the shine on the parquet floors.

My jeans are black. My shoes are white. The floor is dull and gray.

Frank X. Walker is Black. His book Affrilachia collects poems about the African American experience in Appalachia, including one called "Fireproof" about church people who, like fire ants, swarm in response to distress, working together to rebuild their beloved sanctuary after an arsonist burns it down. Their souls, says Walker, are fireproof in the face of hate. I nearly choked up teaching that poem today to students who keep coming back eager to learn despite Covid cases and quarantines and tech difficulties and their entire lives being disrupted. 

My mood was black. They made my day. 

My day is cray-cray-crazy. Another finalist for the botany position will be here today, another opportunity for me to walk a botanist across campus to the next appointment and point to the big piles of snow and say, "In the spring that will be a pollinator garden." Sorry, botanist! Nothing growing here today! 

(The snow is white. The sky is gray.)

And in between the cray-cray-craziness I have to obtain a Covid test because I may have been exposed by a close contact, although probably not, but I was in the same room (unmasked) with the person but not for more than ten minutes, or maybe twenty, or maybe less, and we're not exactly huggy people so I don't know if we ever breathed the same air so who knows? I'm positive that I'm (probably) negative but only the test can tell for sure.

My fears are dark. That's all I'll say.