Juno's Birds

The wicked wind makes ghosts of the snow, while the fat fearless song birds flutter the floor beneath the feeders. I pull the beige accordion shades down low to let a little light in, and to entertain us, the sniffling husband, the sleepy wife and the restless, playful dog. We, the average citizens, are banned from driving, told to hide from Juno and her Roman goddess wrath. And it makes me wonder, has there ever been a hurricane Hitler? Or a blizzard called the Ku Klux Klan? Sometimes I think we want to forget the horrors of humanity so badly that we pretend everything is better now. I call myself a poor white woman. I am not oppressed, just an artist who feels guilty for the little load life has strapped to the bones of my back. Just look at those brave little birds. Aren't they afraid they'll lose their holes in the maple tree? Perhaps they risk it for seeds and socialization. If we went out for a chat, they'd just fly away. I watch the bush branches waver, while bird feet cling. They look like newscasters standing on a dock while horrendous waves rise up behind them, splashing their yellow slicker hoods and the plastic covers on their camera lenses. A metaphore lost on their ignorant bird brains. I embrace the uncertainty of winter storms, of this submission into soft pajamas and seclusion. 

Says the Shirt

I do not have his big brown eyes, but these little blue buttons. I have no beard, dark rimmed glasses or laughter, just this triangular collar and gray stitching. I am not made of hair, freckles and skin, but soft long sleeves and plaid pocketed cotton. He breathes, while I can only flap in the wind. He speaks while my only expression depends on if he folds my cuffs or not. But we are both washable, dependable, warm and comforting. Yet, one day, he might become ill and die, while I'll just tatter before I am bagged and donated. You know, though, whenever he leaves, his things will be your only graspable memory. 

The Lonely Day

Suddenly the sun is sunk. I put on my boots, coat, mittens and leash the dog. I do not take light and so we meander at the end of the driveway before returning inside.

I should go to the movies. What's playing? I take off my polka dot pajama pants, my stained sweatshirt and inside-out tee. I pull on my jeans, zip and button and put on a clean shirt.  I slip into my new shoes. The ones my godmother mailed me. 

Now it's forty-five minutes before the movie. Wait-a-minute. I've been worrying about money all day and I go to a movie? That's illogical. But I really should see people. I've been alone all day. Eh. A screen is a screen and this little one won't cost me $10 to stare at, I decide, untying my shoes, pulling down my jeans and sliding back into the static cling of soft cotton. I might be going crazy with loneliness. I sing with my guitar for a few minutes, my voice like a small fire, but my fingers like brittle kindling. The singing makes me feel less lonesome. A thought which causes me to compare myself to a lost old lady consoled by her own nonsensical chatter. Bagel with cream cheese, clementines, one soft boiled egg. I put on a movie. It turns out to be horribly depressing. I quit an hour in. I turn on an episode of a television series I enjoy about midwives in London's East End during the 1950s, but a main character nearly dies during childbirth and by the end I am sobbing like a bloodied knee child. When the credits conclude, I turn off the t.v., stand and move from that nauseous sensation --the one provoked by too many hours sitting still.  

I need to be outside. 

I push my bare feet back into my boots, zip up my nylon navy coat, leash the dog, and grab the wool mittens my grandmother made and mailed me. I stretch the head lamp around my hat, double clicking both bulbs. 

On the path beside the river, we run. We don't go so far as the woods because I'm frightened of the psychopaths of horror films and newspapers, as well as hibernating mother bears. We turn back. When we reach the commons, a grassy horseshoe surrounded by gray road, I bend over and flash the dull light over the patch of frozen ground beneath me. Then I snap up my hood, click off the lights and lay down. I look up, out, while Penny rolls in circles around me in spasms of ecstatic back scratching. The moon glows. God's headlamp. Star dots speckle from brilliant to dull uncountable clusters. I imagine a world where the air is too contaminated to breathe. Stuck beneath glass roofed communities where the only precipitation flows from hoses, sprinkler systems and cement fountains. If one day I cannot lay on the Earth's cold floor and inhale winter air, I'd rather not live. 

The last of the Wild

I watch geese flap into a bouncing line then fade into black dots behind the edge of the horizon. I delight in the dance of the clouds. I gently mirror the rhythm of the water as it carries tree debris down river. I feel the wind and watch while it bullies the grass, puppets the leaves and seduces strands from beneath my pinched metal hair pins.

I want land, but I can't afford to buy it from the government who pretends to own it with their taxes and town halls. Even if I could, I don't want to buy it, but borrow it like a library book, returning it after my proper turn. I would learn to cultivate a small piece of it, but mostly I'd just like to exist within it.  

I climb out of the car. I hear the cries of coyotes. Do they sing for the storm of snow drifts the forecasters have foretold? Do they yelp for a kill? Are they serenading the glow of our slivered cratered moon? I wait, my boots perched on frozen dirt, wondering if they are weeping at the industrial hum of man's machines. CRYING OUT to break the already shattered silence.

I pull the laces of my snow boots into tight bowed knots over my folded pants, then snap my long navy blue coat from my knees to my neck. I leash my wolf-mate, slip my fingers into my mismatched mittens and walk into the sideways snowy sleet. She dives for tiny rock caves and stick pile tunnels where critters might be hiding or hibernating, her snout wet and white, her eyes wild with an explorer's lust. We climb, crunch and then together we run. She is my sled dog, though I am without sled. She pulls and my feet become light and slick as wooden slats.

As I stand on the grass and look down river, I want to drink the pink wash sky -stretch wide my wet lips and gulp. 

A stubborn latch

The movie is sold out and we've already had supper and a beer and bowl of peanuts from our old favorite bar. So we drive to college, which is now right down the road, past where the old filthy fraternities are now pretty green meadows. The door to our old theater department is accidentally open, a stubborn latch. Inside, photographs of me are on the walls in glass cases: artifacts of my glory days of lit stages. I feel old and somewhat wise, while simultaneously feeling like the fat football jock who lingers beside the rusty rickety bleachers hoping someone might recognize his name from an old trophy or his face from a framed newspaper clipping.  There I was, happy. Life was easy back then, back when I thought it was hard. 

Fly With Me

I have been swallowed by the excitement and isolation of inspiration -a craft project for my new classroom. He is at the desk in our little lofted office, very cross from his computer game losses. And as the night nears, the dog needs to run, pee and probably poop.

"Can we all go outside now?" He asks me, standing beside the kitchen table where double-sided tape and felt scraps pile in heaping hills of brown, green, blue and gold. The fresh air from earlier has leaked from his lungs and the stains on his feet have gone from green to gray.

It was going to be me. I will take our gal jogging. I had offered before I cut myself into a corner with pink fabric scissors, trapped in the timelessness of building something.

Now it feels too late for organized exercise. It is nearly night and I'm hungry for supper.

We slip into sandals and shoes, grab plastic bags, the leash and our long rounded rope. Feet and paws trample the narrow cement street and step onto grass. At the center of this post pioneer place of farm houses, fields, a wide brown river, ancient trees, and a red tent of sunflowers in mason jars for sale, "The Commons" as they are commonly called can be run through with naked soles.

The grass clippings clump into soft tufts, which fly and fall as we sprint like children. I have the dog on her leash and for added length, our long rope, its slack slung from shoulder to hip. I still wear my skirt from work. I don't care. We run. Penny pulls to catch Scott who sprints ahead of us with his long legs. With every jostling flight-like step, laughter escapes my lungs with this purified air and all the stress I have been hoarding in the pit of my belly.

I want more spontaneous play in my life. I don't always need to be corseted in cotton sports bras, pressed into spandex, or laced up into sneakers with socks. Life is too short to not kick off my shoes and run as fast as I can.