January 23, 2015

January Still Life

          Highly colored, sodden fabric dog toys, chewed apart as a butcher butterflies a lamb leg, dot the back yard. 
          One small brown bird sits, alone, on the fence post and will not stop declaiming, bouncing his body entirely to the left, then to the right, as if in parade uniformhis tail decorated with a pencil line of vermilion.
          Some tender-leafed ground cover proliferates in the frozen soil, proving that gardening is not a skill but merely a preference for things that refuse to thrive.
          The air is wet and cold, and the distances between objects are long. The park is too far away today.  
          The concrete bowls of the birdbaths lie face down on the ground, sitting winter out like bystanders to sudden, sourceless gunfire. When we lift them in March, the handful of spindly dandelions beneath will expire in the sunlight.
          The canvas top of the neighbor's Home Depot cabana lies hiked up like a wet skirt over the metal frame, exposing chairs grouped like riderless carousel horses.
          And even now a gauzy copper band of light is forming in the west, and night is coming while we are still at work. 
          February is a week away.
          The back yard waits for our summer candles and outdoor kisses.