A Dead Mouse in Between the Brick

It is an abnormally warm and gorgeous day here in Southern Ontario. Usually, mid-March Break, it’s either snowing, slushing, or something in between. Today I am wearing a t-shirt, the sky is a lazy blue, and I noticed some Hosta buds in my front (unkempt) garden.

The radio is a little louder. Dead leaves were raked. Swept the front porch. Attempted to feed the chickadees at the local trail.

The clouds are a combination of light whips of stretched cotton candy, and others are 60s bouffant hairstyles. There is a hawk circling in lazy figure 8s to the north.

And there is a dead frozen mouse stuck in between the bricks at the side of the house. Its’ front tooth decayed, small paw clinging to the inside of the brick in frozen tension. The poor thing tried to get in, and then couldn’t get out. Already bone skull is visible. It had been there a long while (I avoided a photo — not anything one wants to see on such a beautiful day). It had the audacity to remind me, as light warm breeze ruffled my hair, that there is always decay and finality. There is always endings in new beginnings.

I think of a million warm beginning spring days and hands reaching to pull a brown leaf to find new green growth. To watch the water run into the soil. The dry out and then flood again. Another setting of a season, the reach toward the sun for warmth on skin. A broom sweeping away winter frozen insects, a mumbling of ‘poor things’ and the day blending into another.