brickwork

The bricks were laid upon the ungraded earth, to ride the soil as it sank and tangled. Weeds push through between each paving stone, doing the worlds work despite us. There isn't a level stretch to be found. The patio table where my coffee sits rocks ever so gently at my least touch, craving endless adjustment. I twist and nudge it just the same, finding some precious balance point. Never under estimate the many pleasures of that measure "good enough".

The wind is high, lapping viciously at the fresh greenery, cutting a swathe through the bruised and dusty night. I sit while my coffee quickly cools, abiding the long idle, biding whatever time will have me. Sipping warm coffee, watching the work of the wind as it layers the world with junk and wonders. Earlier a barn owl circled, clicking a trill quick chirp as it flies. The stray cat came down from my roof to bully me for affection. It has given up, and is sleeping spitefully on the porch. Wonders do cease, but they seem to have a hair trigger. You never can tell when they might start again.

It feels like forever, these fleet and lingering years. All the wandering, all the waste. The bitterness and the drama and the ten thousand charms of life all itch like fresh tattoos healing wrong. The night snakes through the hole built inside of me, time bleeding away like so much steam. We are alive at an odd moment. Things are changing faster than they have historically, the technologies of our parents the antiques of today. We think on a scale befitting our temporary status. A world wound with freeways and petroleum distillates, paved over like so many mass graves, is a new thing. We argue for the eternity that the lives we live must seem, placing bets that permanence isn't temporary. I swallow the last of my coffee, and head inside. The night will fade in a few scattered hours and yet it will outlast us all. Every brick laid, every moment treasured.