Hydrangeas

    Behind the shed there is a row of purple-blue hydrangeas leading to a corner guarded by a cherry tree and a rose. When the rose blooms on its trellis it will bloom yellow and red, the sun spotting Joseph's layered coat as it sets down to rest. For now "now" is not "when,"so the rose climbs unclothes, thorns laid bare for all to see. 

    Around the corner the hydrangeas are asleep, bouquets brittle and dead adorning leafless stalks, waiting for clouds of purple-blue to cool and leaves with green deeper than the forest. 

    It is night here, in this corner I have cut from the world. At my back brush-stroken spruces stand silent sentry in the dark and ghostly light glitters down through my greeneried walls, while the stronger sixth of the stars peek down through a street-touched sky. 

    Movement, and I step up to balance on the garden bed's wooden beam as stark shadows stretch out from the underneath me, cloaking the unfound nooks and crannies of the earth, everything lit in shades of black and blue and grey and white in the street-lamp core and the moon-blue beam. 

    The winter air nips at me, and condensation plumes in pillars in front of me. Soon it will be spring and the arching roses will sing gleeful in the sunlight. For now I savor blushing cheeks and the neon moon of this cold night. 

    That neon settles in blood and the marrow of bones, never to be undone or forgot, so I walk under the moon and the cherry tree, wandering the furrows of the night.