Shovel of Rain

Another rain-drenched day, soaked through to its bones with drizzle. Outside a tipped shovelful of rainwater. Inside, a strawberry-shaped timer goes off and four brown hard-boiled eggs, crisp in their starched-jackets are rinsed cold, then placed in the Hall refrigerator box that I got in a set of three perwinklewhiteperwinkle from my Mom for this past Christmas.

This morning's coffee is not chocolate velvet, nor even chocolate silk.

The rain comes down in such a way is to make cursive signature scrawls on the puddles outside.

Pink Lady apples taste like watermelon.

I am loathe to leave a bed which contains the sound of rain, two cats, and the cozy good sheets the color of late-dusk.

The twilight chimes paint will be too purplish for the sunroom and maybe just right for the bathroom. The sunroom, in good Southern tradition, should be a Carolina blue. The bird on the bedroom deck was not a male or female nuthatch but my first Carolina wren.

I saw my first cardinal in Carolina. I first drove to Alabama with a boy from Carolina. Then I met a boy from Virginia who I nearly married.

I will not forget the winter cemetery nor the four deer running on the last of the iced-reservoir.

Not watermelon exactly, but inexactly, like the flavor manufactured at the flavor factory off I-75 in Cincinnati, just before the St.Bernard/Mitchell Avenue exit.

The St.Bernard soap factory is the most gorgeous thing.

My best friend lives off that exit and our favorite gone-place was called Chili Company but we always referred to it as Chili Time.

I have always loved the look of the Bicycle Playing Cards Water Tower.