Pieces of time from a winter past

There was a writing challenge called "Small Stones" (You can probably still find it if you google.), and I fell in love with it. You capture one tiny moment in each day for a month and paint it with words. Sometimes they morph into bigger poems, and I've found that doing this forces me to be mindful and engaged with my world. Here are a few from winter 2012. 

1/18/2012

The bitter wind
Makes the missin you harder.
Lonely sinks deeper into cold bone.
The sky is so gray, so overcast
That even my shadow has left me alone.
My only companions are a few snowflakes.
They are refusing to allow sunshine,
But they aren't passionate enough to cause a storm.
I'm flaky and ungrounded enough join their tribe,
But the blanket of your memory is too thin to keep me warm
So I'm forced to go back inside.

(I don't trust the snowflake gang, actually.
They are meandering, indecisive, lacking focus,
And most assuredly on a downward spiral.)

1/19/2012

I take the dirty, rogue dishes,
And dip them under the water, cleansing them.
I find it gratifying to put them in the drainer,
Forcing them to line up into conformity.
I wonder...
If the local church folk
Wish they could do the same things to me.

1/20/2012

The old, rusted, broken down, Ford truck

is permanently parked by the abandoned farm.

I drive by and try to imagine:

Who wrecked it?

Who was last in the cab?

Maybe a young boy just learning to drive?

Maybe an old man who should've quit driving long ago?

What about the farm?

Who decided to stop painting the barn?

Who sold the last cow?

Who just stopped using the plow?

Likely nobody made these decisions.

Decline seeps in slowly, methodically, invisibly,

Like arthritis in the farmer's bones,

Like dirty oil in the truck's engine,

Like rain drip, drip, dripping on untended wood.