Insects circle, out for blood, skin sugar. Me sweating ice.
Cicadas sawing, thrum baritone above sprinkler shudders,
drums, drowns away aluminum scraping, knees popping and nylon straining
across my bonier behind. Me smelling burnt grass, gasoline, sour beer.
My cardinal companion pauses pregnant nearby.
She eats organic suet from a Lloyd Wright contraption bought
with incidental kindness when I barely mentioned needing more color
in my life, verisimilitude, something common, shared and shareable,
sights and sounds and smells like home.
My neighbor lady plants downward dog across the patio.
She paints family portraits, plays piano, cooks spicy Tofu stir-fry
in a stainless steel wok swimming with oyster sauce, ginger, chili powder,
yellow peppers, curry kitchen incense, their home a temple, scented and
sainted. My cardinal companion rises, flying circles
out and across and away from me, sweating ice,
leaning the lawn chair backward, lifting ankles to the sky and,
shuddering, count seconds to the scraping, popping, straining crash,
praying to hit my head hard enough, to hear bells before the fires burn,
before harpies descend like starving cicadas and tear my flesh in strips.
— wpb —
