blah, blah, blah...

The temperatures are closing in on perfect today ... there is bright sun and a gentle breeze.

- - -

the bitter freezes of South Dakota ... the long walk home from a 8-year old's classroom, using a thin, cheap tennis shoe to break the crystaline ice over an alley puddle - to sit in - and hide the shame of not finding a bathroom in time.

the huddling, chattering rush through the shambly, smoked out apartment ... skirting the chair to avoid his attention and not making it.

-

an idaho mountain farm with the open-eyed deer hanging, gutted and dripping red ... and all that could be smelled was the acrid, pissy midnight odors of beer cans, beer cans, beer all around.

and the bear, and the dog fighting and dying at 4am, the drunken idiots firing wild after they finally woke up and never hit anything but giddily want to "go get that fucker" until the cold seeps into sobering bones and turns shirtless levis back to the poorly lit house, leaving the deer and the dog dead under the dark, hanging tree.

-

more and more, and then a look out this office window, a soft blue sky that i reach out to, gathering together all the small, separated wisps of clouds, cupping them carefully in my hands, smiling at them as they swirl and giggle and grow ~ spinning around and away, off into this warm, embracing morning.