Getting in touch with my creative side

Now that I'm "in transition" - a lovely phrase, used disparagingly by so many, but actually quite accurate - I'm having fun thinking about random things again. And my perpetually busy and creative husband is inspiring me to create something outside of my own head. Last night I started thinking about a poem and finally had to get up and turn on the light and scribble it down. I looked at it again this morning and didn't throw up (though readers may) so I decided to polish it up and publish it here. Fair warning - I think there is more to come.


A Winter Tail

When baby birds plummet from high up nests,
Their feathery ‘chutes failing to open,
And raccoons, riding their opposable thumbs,
Misjudge the speeding car,
And squirrels, sans balance pole,
Learn there’s no safety net beneath suburban power lines

It makes a sad kind of sense.

But what exactly explains the squirrel tail
Lying in my flower bed
Un-bushy, un-perky, and decidedly un-attached,
Slowly fading to match the decorative wood chips,
Once a rich pungent chocolate brown,
Now the sad, gray shade of December?

I entertain the possibilities.

Was it left behind by a sated predator
Like the parsley on a deluxe burger plate?
Was it decoupled by its desperate owner,
Like a burning caboose on a runaway freight?
Or was it shed, like the ways of childhood,
By an ambitious Uber squirrel, hoping for a Christmas miracle?