Prepare for the wind.
It is a sage and a savage.
The eagle standing guard misses nothing a hundred feet up on a three-hundred-year Spruce. His perch is only precarious for those souls terrified to engage the ground.
It’s all there, the flickering afternoon matinee.
The rodent. The buttery Spring. The ambulance.
Rats, being rats, understand the supply chain, the synchronicity, and the natural order of things.
Spring takes the baton from Winter and walks softly on velvet feet, and we sigh gingerly, our lungs full of wool and heavy dust.
The ashen-faced man, wearing his long-billed ball cap, wrapped in a white sheet, is strapped flat on a stretcher. He exits his home, nose, and toes up. The ambulance rolls out silently, with no siren and no lights. There is no rush.
The eagle saw it.
So did I.
They’ll have to remove that cap, or the lid will never shut. The wind, a passing freight train kissing my face, said that—the sardonic little bitch.
The eagle heard it.
So did I.
Unprepared but aware.