Across the street is building a fence and cut down some tall bushes between his house and the next, home to an ‘independent pharmaceuticals distributor’ who reappeared a few weeks ago — and got right back to business — after two years’ mysterious absence following a bloody fight on the sidewalk and police raid. In his line of work, I suppose he might have a green thumb, but who knew he was keen on landscaping until he stood on the neighbor’s lawn last night and yelled, “You’ve ruined my yard’s whole fucking ambience.”

My job search hasn’t been going so well, and I was thinking I might do something different for a while, maybe be the caretaker at a big, remote house somewhere. The wife and the kid and I could get away from the crazy, crowded, frustrating world to someplace quiet. I’d get some writing done, we’d be alone with ourselves, the works. It became more idyllic and alluring the longer I thought about it. But then my idea started to sound a little familiar…

Reassured to find mice in the house, because it’s the sort of the house that should have mice in it, and their absence had me wondering about toxic walls and hiding danger.

Being a giant robot with shoulder-mounted missiles and rocket-propelled fists might not solve my problems, but it would help me express my feelings more clearly.

What I should be doing with myself is buying a pub, maybe this pub, and naming it “Plan B.” That, or “The Drunken Pony.”

A telephone pole is peeling into weathered gray sheets thin as the Lost Dogs and Yard Sales stapled up over years, and there’s at least one strip of wood for each conversation that ever passed through its wires.

First a passing car splashed me from behind, soaking the backs of my legs with freezing cold snowmelt and rain. Then a second car splashed me from the front, just in case. The third car I heard coming, and saw its front wheel hit the puddle and fan water into the air in time to close my eyes before the wave drummed my head and rolled down my collar. But when I got to the intersection in front of my house only to find it flooded, meaning I’d have to wade through, I shook my fist at the sky because that’s just too many metaphors all in a row.

Frozen porch boards groan at just the right pitch to talk me out of leaving the house, and huddled clumps of birds in the bushes chirrup nearly the right notes to come inside for the day.

Snow melted all day before getting caught by the cooling of evening; now heavy mist hangs like the world’s first few feet have been whitewashed.

All at once every tree on our street has let go of its leaves, so it looks like the sunrise was shattered and its colors are snowing from the sky in small pieces. And later on it is actually snowing, as if the dust stirred up by that shattering is coming down after the leaves.