something about a peacock

The sun dominated on the last day of spring. See the peacock coming, her flag folded, her flag of war, which looked the same as her flag of love, so you never knew whether she was flying the one or the other. She marched all the way across the clearing, as she often did in the hours when shade was short. Her space—her destiny—was where the sun meets the earth, all mass and energy.

 

about the payoff

The knowing tone he artfully employed signaled to me what a wise guy he was. He always had this tone. His emails practically winked at me from the screen. And, in person, well, he winked sometimes. When I discovered his scheme--a discovery made completely by chance--I was unsettled. But when next I went into his office the knowing tone artfully employed was heard in my voice. "I was finishing my edit on the contract addendum and had to verify the effective dates against that budget report you processed."

"Oh?" he said (with a most interrogative inflection).

"Yes!" And I told him about how the contract award announcement date, the comment by the guest technology company executive on Charlie Rose, and our work on drafting the requirements all played out in such a curious little drama. And about how if a body didn't know better, he might get curious about it all.

"How much?" he asked. (This question lacked the exaggerated inflection of his last.)

I winked and pulled the door shut.

and

I'm up close so you can't see

The path around the backyard

Watered, green escape; a little unkempt but altogether perfect. Garden beds along the path hugging in the grass. Clothesline, birdbath, roses and dogwood. The big pecan tree and shade freckled with sun. Even back then this was already a place protected in the warm trust of memory. Greened my hands with the broken skins of unripe pecans smashed against the tree trunk. Grandpa's Lava soap cleaned my hands, and his knowing it would was better than my hands returned unstained

 

Spring

Today's were high clouds. They rose up until they altogether lost definition, first being seen, then seen through, and finally seeming to not matter anymore at all. This would be the one thing you want from anything you look up to.