Category: Writing

Soggy pine needles clump where last night’s rains deposited them. The curves and grooves along the lane remind me of the silty undulations of a dried-up river bed. The bottom half of the sun peaks out in splashes of gold elongating the already long horizon. A rippled cloud swims like shark gills.     

These shoes have lost their padding. There’s utility left in them, and the aesthetics haven’t broken. Maybe next season I’ll get rid of them.  And what about that sore spot? The hammer strike of ball of foot against pavement? The slight pressure that wasn’t there before? This, too, could be a metaphor.

Long yawns and heavy eyes. Cars with loud mufflers race on the boulevard. The lamps hum and the lamps hum. This is the best a tired mind can do while the lyrics to “Cornflake Girl” play in my head.  I’m obligated to say “big streeetccchh” when the dog stretches. Yawn again. Again.

The knob resists before giving way with a twist. The tank spits a soft hiss. The burner catches with a fist-sized fireball that rolls out and up and puffs to smoke. The second burner lights in sequence like dominoes falling. Bone-in thighs shishhh. A few flames kiss. Now, we’re cookin’ with gas.

All Along the Watchtower, White Men in Black Suits awaited the Season of the Witch. This wasn’t far from The Garden on Baker Street beneath The Shadow of Seattle. Nearby, a Sour Girl Fell on Black Days. In her Times of Trouble, she sang an Uptown Anthem – her private Symphony of Destruction.  

In the spring rain puddles of April, worms parade like drunken mummers down the avenue. There’s little order to their belly crawl antics and even less hustle. Heavy boots, I try to avoid stepping on their trombone-slide bodies. I worry my eyes are slower than my feet. I’m tempted to tip-toe home.

The rain, barely visible, reminds me of pixels falling down the screen on an old 8 bit computer. In the blue screens of my youth, we wrote commands in whitish-yellow text. 10 Print “Commodore 64”; 20 GOTO 10; RUN. The program repeats and the rain cascades. I’m looking for the RUN/STOP key.

The morning light? I don’t want to talk about it. The robin singing? Don’t want to talk about that either. The slurping sound of the dog licking his paws… not up for discussion. The drooping plant from an ex? Completely off the table. In fact, let’s forget this whole thing ever happened.

The smell of wood-smoke in the frosty dawn draws my eyes to rooftop chimneys. It’s as if seeing where the smoke originates might help me breath it in more deeply. This satisfying familiarity predates my memory, feels like a calling back. Fire burning wakes the primeval, speaks to a time before time.

The third-floor mezzanine at the airport lounge had been turned into a concourse for the infirm and early retirees. People would be plucked out of the ground and their roots given a shake before being placed there like tiny rabbits behind white picket fences. This only happened on cloudless days, dreamless nights.