The Fresh New Ending Of A Season (A series of portraits)

And the town is ours on this muffled cloudy morning,
Everything silent, so that a dog's howling is unnaturally loud,
heartbreaking and a little eerie;
A baby bird's chirping underneath a dumpster;
Earsplitting,
Sending the dog into a frenzy, so that I cannot investigate further.

The ground is damp beneath my bare feet, her paws
And we brush raindrops like jewels from long, bent dry-grass as we walk by.

There, a perfect brown aspen leaf on the sidewalk,
Raindrops collected in its hollow.

Further down, bright white flowers catch my eye
Among a lush forest of squash vines cascading over a wrought-iron fence.

Hello! The man across the street calls after my soft exclamation of wonder,
Hello! Is my answer, and we exchange how do you do's before continuing on.

(I write about walking and rain, nothing new, but never the same.)