Saturday

The backyard birds have competition. I came here to hear them, their morning melody, rousing like a symphony with a wind-blown branch as baton, small and so frail, severed off a tree by a sunrise gust from the south. The men next door are re-roofing their house, hammering shingles while their radio blares a wicked country brew: a cacophony of twang and Texas drawl, with she’s-a leavin’ me behind in muh tears accompanied by their raucous talk and the snap of beer-in-a-can. I pluck weeds from the garden, ears straining for the inimitable notes of nature, wishing the robins could drown the pedal steel, the pedestrian commercial pap, that their crescendo devour

the chorus of nails and woe-is-me,

stain the fresh-laid black with white when they are finished.

Andreas Gripp

RF Image