-Coiled-
Like the field-of-vew wobble you get by rotating a coke bottle. But not blurry. Just tinted and gyrating. It is a beginning of the day smell that tugs well past 4pm. And the trees just opened a box of doughnuts. The sprinkles cross-pollinated with the frosted and jelly-filled. The lid got all mashy. Someone has powdered sugar stuck on their fingers. And there is a three year old twisting. Ready to fly as soon as enough tension builds in her mother’s arm. Maybe that’s what they mean by Spring. That uncomfortable, almost let go already. While mom is still tisking and settle down will ya? We have to cross the street. But it is the not-crossed street that is the problem. It’s before coffee, and thus too soon. At the same time, coffee already brewed, burning in the...
Read More-Hearth and Home-
I like to walk badly while gawking at houses. Somewhere in the peeling yellow, and bare-historical-wood-rot, there is something worth stubbing my toe. I muse after stone and story. Lose my feet in boarded windows. I hoard a good archway, pergola molding, and spire. That irregular load-beam protrusion needs my day dreams. Perhaps this was once a duplex, but now it has bad stucco and it leans like a widow who too late in life has to figure living alone. He forgot to shave this morning, and has misplaced the groceries. Each cracked pane reminds him of wordlessness. And he leaves his gate at a rusty discordant angle. Maybe one day I will groan and list groggily out of my vinyl siding. Shake off my Grecian columns, and abut a courtyard. Until then, 00 Be the 1st to...
Read More-Willful Unsprung Strolling-
The trail is still ice. We have all thawed, and are thinking about shorts. But under the trees by the stream where everyone expects spring to meet them like an old friend at an airport; there it is still a wintry mud. The trail won’t put down her bags or even lift her arms when we give her a hug. We all go in for it anyway, we want to walk in the woods. To carry spring’s things and put her up for the night while she gets settled in town. We are resolute because it is fifty degrees. This means it is time. We say things about how nice it is out, and then go sliding and tripping. Yet, she doesn’t laugh at our jokes, and all the pauses are awkward. We slosh. We look at the geese. Watch our feet and put our arms out at frictionless angles. It is time for this ice to...
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