Left Overs

Left over cabin brain gas from February.

The world here is being reborn as the winter after birth melts in the sun. Like Chinese water torture, the drops plink incessantly down pot marking the earth, creating a cratered surface like an adolescent schoolgirl’s face. The squirrels cling to the trees, where the sun now shines, trying to forget the damp and cold that’s tired their bones for so long. The drops keep staccato time out of synch with the seconds that pass. Spring is still damp, and struggles against the premonitions of fat hole rats. What if the earth got tired of all this? What if the plants and animals just gave up one day and went to sleep instead; the trials of constant renewal and change simply not worth it anymore? Of course if they did, we would scourge them with fire for their insolence and live off each other. We’d be reduced to what we really are, cannibals at heart never able to fill our persistent grumbling bellies. If we were the ones that gave up, the forests would simply cover us with leaves not caring if we ever woke again. The deserts would blow sand upon us trying to smother us and make us go away. Suburbs would be beautiful again, populated with rampant gangs of mammals not accustomed to such finery. Bears would laze away the days on warm concrete driveways and hold fancy pool parties. Raccoons would burrow into the soft down of lazy boy chairs and expensive leather sofas. And the squirrels would run the dormant electrical lines like circus performers. The weeds would claim the cracks again and fracture the roads with their slow determination. Not a single animal would look to the heavens for answers.