Nomenclature [repost]

Cool blue morning. Cool-blue. And cool. Cool enough for a snatch of breath to sketch the air. Brown birds are muted shapes in strafe across the storm door’s face. Seventeen steps and two gardenia blooms and bumblebees on abelia, sleep a quarter before eight. The day before, V shooed away one clinging to my sweater.

In a pinch a chipmunk sounds like a tiny stubborn bird.

Yellow lawns, leaves less so. Collects in curbsides, dies beside mulch. A pine cone cracks against the driveway center, shatters and forgets one second between minutes that forgets itself. What forgives abandoned houses? What is amnesia to a cul-de-sac?

No recycling pickup yesterday. On an honest street we know that this means one more day the landfill goes without its under-table scraps.

There are, at least, three-hundred thirty-six types of moths in Georgia and one follows me inside, takes the overheads for constellations. Lands on the kitchen counter. Looks like what we called a powdered snout. Idia aemula would be beautiful if it came from its own mouth.

[originally posted in Maroon Almanac on September 17, 2024]