October 25, 2022

circles

The picnic table, soaked to the studs from yesterday’s rain. My thoughts keep 
backpeddling toward summer. Regretful I hadn’t planted carrots, or staked the tomatoes
properly. Wondering if I could have slept better had we painted the backsplash 
that soft hue of turmeric. Everywhere I look could use a little sprucing up—the countertop
dusted with crumbs from this morning’s hasty breakfast, my sneakers bearing a stain
of mysterious origin, the shower caddy gummed with soap. Why is it hard to keep myself
from blistering the landscape—so quaintly autumnal, sweetened by a still-warm mist—
with these slingshots of critique, gnawing on some bone long stripped of the meal it gave?
Outside, some wayward insect makes drunken circles around a crack in the planks.
In the diffuse light of fall, a reserve of water sparkles inside it like a tiny, infinite oasis.