evergreen

birds gurgling
songs
christian praise music infiltrates under my walls
why must they have their transcendent adolescent awakening in the backyard next to mine??

i watered the yard just now
have cut my knuckles without knowing it,
am alternately
tense, constricted
and vast, open amorphous.

my writing house is yellow,
yellow orange cream with blond wood,
like the thick lacquered photo of a desert mountain range that sits propped against the old air conditioner.

i take pleasure in being casual,
curt, effortless.

the birds in the pecan tree are loud swirls of concentric song.
(i'd recognize those chord structures anywhere, isn't the birdsong praise enough???)

i am content to turn my inside thoughts to physical details like lighter yellow paint on dark, like sun window growing larger each minute of the morning, like sun on the back of my neck, like sprays of water catching light as they hit the side of the house.

i am excited that we have hedges of desert rose,
rosemary plants growing under the dryer exhaust,
cherry trees blooming in a dust yard.

i am glad that we have five screen doors to our name,
and that i can open them in progression
safe succession every morning,
on the whims of the indoor cat
who wants a view outside but remains hidden and curled into a pool of wood-grain sunspots.

the dueling melodies are painful,
how long will this project of charity go on????

as i walk through the yard, i kick old husks of pecan shells, pebbles, and break a last trail through evergreen sap,
raining quietly down from the trees.