Snowmelt tuns to fog. The recycling truck pulling its rickety wagon sorting bin bounces down the street dipping and rattling in winter’s potholes.  Men in neon yellow-green hoodies sort the cardboard from the cans from the plastic tubs and tubes. Wine bottles, beers bottles, pizza boxes – we ravenously consume and begin anew.

Three squirrels candy cane stripe their way up the trunk of the front yard maple. It’s warmer but not warm.  Grassy lawn pokes through threadbare snow. Bright air, bright sky, new year. Somewhere, a family struggles through cancer. Somewhere else, someone’s preparing to propose. Endings, beginnings, what we carry year to year.

Two ravens, or maybe crows, squawk from tall pines at opposite ends of the street. The pines become the towers of a castle, large birds standing watch. This is when I want to call them rooks but I look it up and they live across the ocean. So do all the castles.

Wanting to warm our bones beside the fire – sentiments unique and universal as old as time. Loss and longing too – we can’t own these things or tuck them into our pockets like a stone picked up from the beach, worn smooth, rubbed smooth, slow wishes, damp bones, slow evenings and warming fires.

On the morning walk, I mentally composed bad lyrics to the tune of “Get Back” by The Beatles. Kimbrough was a dog who came from Cincinnati / and he was a big ol jerk. / Matt adopted him thinkin’ he’s not a baddie / he just needs a little work. / Get Back.

I have no say in the color of the sky – probably a good thing. Bands of soft pinks and peaches pale the early light. Slight hues on the slick black road mirror the dawn. Every day a new palette on the horizon breaks the monotony of this otherwise routine life. Thank you.

In the nighttime, when the colors of the sky have drained to bluish-black, I find inspiration refuses to sit and have a drink with me – and so I drink alone, scanning the landscape for something, anything to spy and see and maybe put to words. Fifty-two of them. Frozen ground, nothing stirs.