yard art

                        for Mike, who belongs to this story

driving south on route 20 you see all kinds of things: a two-story tall chicken, Christ from blow-up to porcelain, even one black and proud.  fountains.  planters.  statues of gnomes, gargoyles, dragonflies, pink flamingos.  old tires, pieces of wood, toilets, eroded cars, outhouses and couches.  there are silhouettes of women bending over and farmers smoking pipes, cows, fences, Christian reminders, all artificial, all seemingly purposeless. 

sometimes you even see the owners perched on stoops drinking cans of Natural Lite waving, or very kindly rocking back and forth on porch swings older than they are and they all sit there with nowhere to go and no one to meet.

but the other day I saw the best one what must have been thousands of bell jars stacked on the porch each one full of earth and worms, a mixture of Halloween and Christmas decorations covering the double-wide.  twinkling colored lights in all their glory here in May.  and a three-legged Doberman panting in the sun its two front paws holding down the remains of a goat skull.  while a man fat, glorious, and stinking hunched shirtless in a kiddy pool gazed at the road smoking a cheap cigar.  his arms held up high revealed heavy black curls.  and a woman behind him, too fat for a two-piece scrubbed him with the broken head of a deck brush.

this is love, I thought.  as broken and damaged as it is.  this is love.  we should all be so lucky, to have our undercarriages wiped clean of life’s little inanities.