By late afternoon the wind scrambles down
the bluff but the warmer air resists, trapped
in the hollow behind the house. We try opening
and closing all the windows until a shutter loosens
and then tumbles onto the grass. We leave
it lying where it fell. The wet will warp the wood
the same, however way they meet each other. We
won’t be here to nail it up come March, we’re
turning the place over to the bank, that’s what both
of us are thinking even if we haven’t said as much so far.
Jingle mail, it’s called, for the sound made when
the paper hits the mailroom floor. Still, it is December,
after all, I owe us both a little something like festivity,
and I drag a cardboard box down from the attic
onto the porch, remove a wreath. It smells
of mildewed plastic and, very faintly, oranges.
Years ago I pinned a red and yellow ribbon onto
the loop of phony pine, and there it’s stayed, wilting
like a belle in rotten weather. By tonight the temperature
will dip again, the season seeks its equilibrium.
And we’ll close ourselves up in the house for good, wait
inside for the letter that we’ve been told comes certified.
I brush away a cobweb overhead. And then a damselfly,
who must have only yesterday emerged, you can thank
the thaw, while I was fiddling with this synthetic frippery,
descends behind me, stills her wings. It would be cruel
to let a creature like her starve, bright green coruscating
foundling, she should have gone on sleeping in the marsh.
And what will she eat, with so many months left to pass
in slow-moving time before another equanimity of light
and darkness? I crush her underfoot.
