Dark Morning

Ladybug metaphors–buzzing chitinous aggravations in the morning, first thing when the desk lamp suddenly becomes their sun.

I’ve put  a coffee cup with an inch of water and a few drops of detergent by my keyboard–more specifically near the lamp that draws the clumsy flying orange freckles that become black holes against my monitor, land in my hair, crash into the crevases of the numeric keypad.

There’s some satisfaction in wetting a finger (different one each time because these creatures leave a smell and taste when disturbed) lifting then dropping them one by one to do the backstroke in the Yellow Mug of Doom.

Hounds. Somewhere in the dark pasture. I’ll walk the dog on the leash later and hope these disembodied Baskervillians stay far off, no dog to dog beyond shared scent sprinklings at the same important clump of pasture grass. Tsuga will bristle with razorback fur.

Full moon flashes cryptic, code against barn roof. Tattered clouds scurry past pulled apart, strobe-lightning too brief to walk by, dark-blind. Wind on the ridge blows no good, the world on edge, I go into the cold to know, the message masked in dark light dark and the moan of blown branches.