Chiaroscuro Horses It doesn’t matter that the barncan’t taste the fly or the floorboardsmell the boot, its cobbled leather,manure underfoot. Sometimes horizonknows more than sky. I can starefor hours into its learning curveas snow settles into fissures, purple hues.From the far reaches of the corral,a horse knickers in the color red.Blue outlines its steamy breath.It
Ice Fishing We are little black dots on the lake milling about a hole in the ice, stomping our feet for circulation,watching our lines for tension. gray sky, gray ice, gray snow.January’s long lull, frozen tundra, the only noise a distant car on the ivy road. The trains are detained,planes grounded.The quiet trickles into our
Defensible Space A buffer between a structure and its surroundings She said the sky is full of wildfire smoke He said close the windows seal the cracks with masking tape She said there’s a thin layer of ash on the picnic table He said the rain will take care of it She said the sky
Burglary at the Garden Inn Neither of us thought that broken windows and swear wordswere the same or that jigsaw puzzles and shattered glasscould switch pieces.We didn’t know that police reports and security cameraswere necessary, or that shop-vacs and brooms could gatherscattered shards into sparkling confetti.Neither of us thought that a cardboard strip coveredby a
Zip Line Tour Costa Rica We shed our rigging, our hardhats and belt clips, climb into the van to ride back to the beach hotel, palm trees and piña coladas. Zip-lining bonded us, the two grandmas, while younger tourists cheered as we hooked up our harnesses to zing through rainforest canopy. I try small talk—Do
