Roundhouse Runs

Black squirrels bound skewways from the house, shadowshifts falling darkly on dusty white autumnal snow. Paw prints run makeshift memories soon snowed over. Leaping on tree trunks they wind their way upward on paths of birch bark in quick roundhouse runs. I watch them go from a seat by the door and eavesdrop on the dripping eaves trough. Icicles hang like stalactites and drip their dew onto the driveway. The heater blows dry air over my face as dust rides recirculated draft flows and floats upward in a beam of magnetic light. A thin frosting of human sloughcells settles on the windowsill in a regiment I attack with the duster before they regroup and resettle. Single cells born of a single self. I pace circles on the fading cream carpet.