Life’s Little Misdirections 🥀🦋

The Clotting Season

Sploosh! Bus!!

Zipped in green nylon,
my muffled world in persistent Autumn rain.
Out the door into fresh morning adventure,
sploosh the thickest, muddiest ones
with tall, brand new rubber stompers,
thick and black and dry.

The dome of protection shrouded eagerness to clutch
the brightest, prettiest castoffs, clotting
verdant yards -- firm receptacles for the maples' disposal.
How they shuddered in blasts twisting twiney branches.
Not me.

Unbending form, buffeting invisible persistence,
would slow walk straight into rough gales,
with chugging arms' exaggerated thrusts.
I’d scream louder, a defiant storm in my own right,
mightily slicing waves with ample form.

Puddles divided, resected, circled back
to reform, receive minuscule, rainy offerings
in my observations in youth.
Rain gear, like an observatory, made it
all so distant -- partitioned, yet adjoined.

A world I could overwhelm
in hooded apparition each morning,
with harrowing climaxes — yellow flashes
in dim light. Helpless, when these seasons
got the best of my joy, trudge home to her to confess,
I need a ride.


9.23/25.21
27 lines, free verse

I want to be more nostalgic, in this way…but it hurt. Every time I have a negative experience, I want to quit…until I can forget. But then, repetition makes/helps me remember. Life can be a bit much. I just have to remember (to a point, and then quit thinking).

Our loved ones can be the cruelest, without realizing.