prose sketch: rainy Sunday

Sun. 6 Jan 2013 2:20 p.m. my living room

A little brighter than twilight—just. A rainy vacant Sunday in the New Year. Through the big windows looking onto the balcony, the world is a study in wet mustardy browns and rusts: the plain wood lattice of the rails, the algae sheen of the unfinished wooden deck, the green-rimed terra-cotta of the pots Kimmie set next to the wall for warmth, the shriveled leaves of the balding maple that embraces the salient of the deck. Behind: the beige wall of the neighbors’ town house, windowless, its top out of sight. Little jewels of rain tremble below the handrail of the balcony. Beyond all: the wet indefinite sky, dully backlit for another hour or two.

A sense of patient hunkering in, not so much waiting as enduring.