As I count crows sitting on the clothesline I see a shape in the distance that I do not recognize I move a little closer but the ash trees bring a sad shade and the lawn flashes its blades, cutting directly to the heart in syncopated beatings like chopping wood in August when the last saw is locked away in the shed
I wipe the sweat from my brow with a scarf scented of past evenings chasing fireflies and drinking iced tea, foggy memories in place of bi-focals smeared and blurred, unable to focus on the sticker burrs pulled from my socks, hanging on for dear life, let alone the figure approaching just past the produce stand with apples and aspargus in season
Still I look, peering beyond a fractured arbor of beer bottle skeletons situated at the far corner of nowhereβs homestead, off-white pickets and a rusted gate now overgrown and over sown in rows of corn field miseries, shucked and burned in a steel barrel down by the mud creek minstrels playing broken strings and bent tubas
When I realize it is you coming home to me, walking through the sunflowers, an effervescent blue sky background glows, roses bloom in pinks and yellows, robins tend to their young beneath a rainbow of blessings in assorted hues and feathers as what was once what I dreamed now slowly becomes what I see, returning to its former beauty and the sun shines again