promenade ovenbird The aspens are edged with gold. My face is framed with silver. The day began heavy as pewter, then melted to mercury, the river high and rising higher, spilling over its cloudbanks. In the abandoned lot: one white balloon, newly born, its lungs full of all the air it will ever breathe. It seeps its single exhale– its one sigh gifted from another’s throat. The morning is menaced by barbed wire, fences armed with teeth sharp enough to kill. Guarding…what? A dinghy the colour of weak sky, a tangled fishing line, a lobster trap. There are no rabbits today. On the sidewalk: a bumblebee, a wax sculpture of itself, silent, unmoving. I could pick it up, examine every hair on its spent body. I could place it on my tongue like saltwater taffy, let it dissolve. The air smells like powdered sugar. What an impossible thing, that we can taste sweetness on the breeze, that we can taste the bitterness of being forced to live another day, the astringency of everything that’s possible. 260915 what's it to you? who go blather from