Category: Writing

Orange mug, apple green plate with brush-stroke swirls, a silver knife with a yellow-white cloud of butter. So often, despite their vibrancy, the morning colors go sleepily unnoticed. The prints on the walls show still lifes by Cezanne.  Out of the thousands of words I choose fifty-two. Only one is required: attention.

Huddled in a faded yellow bowl, six nectarines sleep. It’s early, even for them. Awake, what might they whisper? Do they blush? Do they admire each other’s colors: soft yellows and shades of red like cardinal and carmine, rusty and rosewood? Do they call each other sweetie or say, “you look delicious?”

It’s evening and the shades are pulled. I see reflected in the sleek, black glass of the upturned phone, the concentric circles of the ac vent. The lampshade casts a flashlight glow on the ceiling. I misread a book title as “Dialogues with Cloudbursts.” I like that. We could use the rain.

The tablecloth covering the patio table shines picnic bright. Striped in yellows, greens and watermelon reds it’s flat and slightly soft like the padding on an ironing board. If it could take flight, I think it would. Instead, it invites us to sit a while and have breakfast in the mid-morning sun.

I woke to the chirping of a Northern Flicker. The morning is open-window breezy. The sky seems wider today – bluer too. With the sun to the east and angled lower, it warms the left side of my face and neck. Wisps of clouds lace the upper atmosphere. Everything floats in this wind.

The light at dawn is clear and bright. The air, refreshingly cool. A squirrel crawls across the deck as a Carolina Wren and a House Sparrow chitter back and forth. Every day the world wakes to new light, new song. Every day the world waits for more of us to get along.

A late August chill fills the night air, quiets the summer noises. It is the last day, the last day, the last day of the month. It feels like a bigger ending than that, a bigger ending than that. A season, a year, an epoch, or maybe just another evening. Goodbye August.

The red key on the jangly key ring opens the padlock on the roll-up gate. My stuff, from the inconsequential to the sentimental, rests neatly, stacked in boxes and rows behind a thick mattress wrapped in a blue tarp-like bag. The red key unlocks my past. The red key stays with me.