Category: Writing

The dark purple maple fills the picture window at the front of the house. It looks as if the morning light hasn’t reached that side of the lawn yet. Sleepy clouds shift. The thin ones shuffle and slide. Soon enough the cricket’s chirp will disappear and the leaves will start to fall.

At 3am, it’s dark. At 3:30, it’s still dark. The light from the phone that tells me the time is unnatural in this space. This is one long groan – the waking, the staring, the finally getting up. Not doing so feels pointless. At 4am, it’s dark, but at least I’ve had waffles.

Two crows play call and response sharing the morning’s news. The sky is the color of gray smoke, and the trees don’t seem as green or bright as they were yesterday. Maybe that’s the news these chatty crows share: soon the colors will burst and pop, then drain in the graying light.

The evening air in the darkened house is still. It’s an ice cubes in my drink kind of night. The rise and fall lift of a long sigh soothes my aching back. And the crickets chirp away. With the lights out, I can see the fireflies sparkle and fade. Sparkle and fade.    

Computer glow, lights low. Hi-fi in the summer night. Clap along, sing the song. Knowing everything’ll be alright. Eyes are shut, groove and strut. Bounce and bop and shake that ass. Snap snap freeze, bend your knees. Take me to church, take me to mass. Music lifts, funky rifts – give me more.

It’s midday humid and muted bright. Clouds are on the way. Birds squawk and chirp. Some sing. A mail truck snails its way down the street. Where has this thickness come from, this petrified trunk of an afternoon? Where are the party hats and horns hidden? Are they in that late-day bloom?

Because I’m listening, I hear the low and constant roar and rumble from the highway north and east of town. An incessant type of white noise. An engine static that, once heard, is almost deafening. This is the machine shop buzz at dawn, the mechanical whir and whine of our busy world.  

Distant cars race in the night, muffler loud and gear-shift crying. Eyes close. Time passes. Different cars rev and ride. Eyes close heavy. Time passes. Quiet. Eyes fade. A made-up song plays in my head. I talk with two homeless men running, dancing, fidgety near an empty lot. Wake to different cars.

August night, skeeters bite. It’s grown dark, no fading light. The neighbor talks to me from the other side of the chain link fence. He wants to know my dog’s name. He knows a woman who volunteers at the shelter. I say I miss him, and I’m tempted to rescue him again.

In this Sunday morning sun, I sit. The coffee steams in the cool air. I read, but my mind wanders – returns things to the hardware store, loads the car, drops off bags at Goodwill. I’m everywhere but here. The poet writes, “so what if it doesn’t come / to a hill of beans—”

In the late-day sun atop a scraggly pine, a charm of Goldfinches nestles among the cones. A slow sax strolls through the screen door to the deck and the table and the glass of wine. The temperatures fall with the setting sun. The Grackles all fly north. Slow down, it’s a science.