Steamroller

"It is simply a question as to how long you can, or rather how long you will, stand it." — Eugene V. Debs

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            What are you telling me?

I'm here to describe what I see from where I am: It's a Friday mid-afternoon, before one of the long weekends lengthened most every month for a legal observation or parochial holiday of some kind. It's supposed to rain, but the air is still. It's muggy & supposed to be hot tomorrow, too. It's supposed to be some season or another, but the terms keep indefinitely changing, except as defined by my distressed neighborhood of DIYers noisily beginning dry season repairs on their lost causes that never seem to get finished. Not today, though — it's respectably quiet, besides an occasional passer-by or other fleeting movement.

            Who are you?

For now, I sit inside, in what I call the comfy chair, next to an open window like the ghost of a cat who used to wander the yard, but lost its curiosity of nature & now lives-on as its own internalizing memory. There's a stack of various books — reference, anthologies, etc — that doesn't decrease due to the ongoing demand of alternating moods or dependable distractions. Only an hourglass has unfailing passage — it never stops, dedicated to taking time off the hands of its kept keeper, until it ultimately does, suddenly too late to be noticed anymore.

I’ve picked out a previously bookmarked title, layered under a book of historical fiction, a posthumous selected works & a dictionary. The mark opens to an essay about ways to read, abandoned for some reason before. I don’t know why I’m even reading it again, except that I always have the feeling that there’s something I must’ve missed — something that will outline why things don't appear the way I’ve imagined they're supposed to be.

            I imagine anything is imaginable.

Well, however — just as we’re all nearly set loose into the interior celestial of possible redirection, the outer terrestrial feels, as usually imposed, free to serve up its latest summons.

So, today, leaning back with the lost comfort of such documents, spread out by the sheer volume of mythical truths, a distraction rumbles to a stop down the street, followed by the sound of chains clanging, dragging & dropping with a final ring. Then, a thunk & a metal scrape punctuated by bursts of commands in a voice like a human crow:

"Come on, Kyle!—Hustle!—No!—Dump it in the middle!—Come on, Kyle!"

            Wait — that’s my name!

I’ve tented the book & now stand at the open window — the sky is growing gray, threatening to break the heat.

            Ahhh, I see now — here we go — the unexpected has expectedly arrived again. Please go on: