30 Prose Poems in Thirty Days: One - The Fool

The Fool

The sky is littered with the spent shells of small humilis clouds. It is a humble day, despite the boast of the afternoon sun. She is cooling herself under the wide expanse of shade the Russian Olive provides. Her feet are swollen and she has unfastened the leather laces and the top five buttons of her blouse. She is free of those she has left behind: the man and the sleeping child. She has been granted permission to step out of the life given her to stealth through alfalfa and wheat fields and alongside creeks swollen with mountain water. The mountains to the east still hold snow in their creases. She has not slept or eaten in three days. Bird chatter seems to her like a chorus chanted from a Greek tragedy. She remembers the stew and its potatoes and hank of pork she left simmering on the cook stove. The clouds remind her of the smoke symbols she read about in a book on the New World. She tries to decipher their meaning and finds in the bumpy cauliflower shapes a warning from the ghost of her mother.

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