This little ode to my new town was composed in response to a prompt at my wonderful writing group last week – it was so good to spend time writing with (and listening to) Treg, Heidi, and Nancy again.  And it’s this week’s Project Create.

Ode to Ellensburg

What can happen on a slightly more than breezy day here.

Leaves wave in the breeze.

We call it a breeze around here unless it is strong enough to knock you down. That’s when it is a wind. If you called it a wind before it becomes strong enough to knock you down, every day from March through June would be windy.

And that would be unpleasant.

Instead, we call it a breeze and those spring days – so many, many days in a row – are breezy. That sounds much better. Breezy, like easy. It’s a breeze, we say, when we mean it’s as easy as pie.

So we’re saying the leaves wave in the breeze, when what we mean is that the trees are bending, bowing, whipping in the wind. Wear a hat, we say to each other, it’s a little breezy out there. We look out the window, see the young maple bending nearly sideways.

A little breezy, we say. But a beautiful day.