With smothered sounds like wet laundry in the wind, the paper broke away, slanting in devious and hidden turns, as if an augury, over new puddles and me running after it. My corduroy coat spiraled, then clung, soft as an evening dress, beguiling and forward, to swirl about my thighs in gorgeous disintegration. I danced down the street's polished verse, one complete waltz after another, to ring in the last year of the 1900's. Hello to the mud-covered future, or whatever illusion the new year chooses to wear. A buzzard, weightless, rises on the updraft alone like a girl among strangers.
Stars wash out as warmth colors the fields.
My eyes follow blooms slipping off my shoe while I pause to breathe. The path turns quietly hillside. Without my arrangement, the earth curves and turns, and myself with it.