A North Star. A tuning fork. A thermometer

I’ve been communing with objects again — the ravaged zinnias, the stolid garden rocks, a trowel head missing its arm. Its arm. Inanimate. That is, not spirited, I guess, non-breathed. But the zinnia takes its dying breaths and gives its exhalations, sips the last of its raindrop juice; the rocks take in and give off the rainwater and bits of themselves in a kind of slow slow inspiration/expiration, and the metal trowel has a stout life of some sort, still stuck in the earth. Or is that mere fancy? But look at its headless handle, poor thing. Slowly the rain will deconstruct the wood to its fibrous shards, sighing its… I don’t know, there’s probably an oxygen molecule in the process somewhere that will drift out with some carbon, as I sigh my carbon dioxide, or whatever I have coming out of me, into the morning. Why not perceive the world as animated? After all, the door really did hit your ass on the way out. The last rose welcomed your nose with open petals. Here’s a friendly poem by…