“The earth shook and shuddered like a sheet of metal stretched between two boulders and shot at by boys with slings. The trees bent back with the wind and rebounded, slapping their flailing arms on the cliff-sides as clouds heavy with moisture sped across the sky, saturating the air with morose glowers. ‘Let me go,’ everything seemed to mutter. ‘Let me go.'”
Shapeless, green tartan dress down to below the knees with mannish Oxfords, or short, brown high-heeled boots. Thin, crocheted leg warmers in cream out of angora or some such fuzzy, light catching fiber. The dress has a black, peter-pan collar. A voluminous, heavy camel trenchcoat. Hair in double knots with strands escaping. Russian style furry hat in light gray. Light pink, cat eye glasses. Dark lipstick. Long, loose scarf.
Tartan blankets cross my knees. It smells of dust and ladybugs.
All is quiet, burning softly. Just moth wings churn noise.
A creep of cold on the windowpane begins, tap, tap-tap,
Glistens in moonshine. Scrapes the velvet. Lamp low breathes red into the room.
Moths cluster and spin around the light making grim, fluttering shadows run around the walls.
If only the ladybug hurling himself at the bedstead would succumb to natural rest:
a winter’s death and withered exoskeleton,
crumbling wings and a rusting head.
The cold has taken the wild geese south,
and the drip drop of rain on the roof is muffled
by slumps of snow.
Ladybug, ladybug on the wall,
fly away to your home in the grasses where Death treads alone,
gleaning with a mistletoe crown on his bony skull, red holly balls in his eyesockets, and
a robe that ripples in the breeze.
Go greet him with your brightness
in delicate trails across the snow;
wander till you see him,
then flutter up with spider wings,
and let him consume you.
Die, that Death might live.