Economies

There goes the wind, trying to untether things in its path, banging the windows shut and open: I do not care so much about the wind and the deck furniture, the trowels, the plastic flower boxes. I want to run outside, hold my cup to the rain beginning to fall, warm as milk or the ocean in summer. In my childhood home, when there was no water in the pipes, we flung the dinner scraps to the chickens, then washed our plates in the stream that trickled from the gutter’s crooked elbow. We gathered fallen eucalyptus leaves and cleaned the dirt off their faces, then boiled them to soften and scent pailfuls of bath water. The roosters with streaks of fire in their dark tails knew to beat their wings as they caroled the hours; even in the dark, they knew where to roost in the gaps of the barbed-wire fence.

 

In response to Via Negativa: In Seething Lane.

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