The big houses so many people HAD to have...
THE MANSION stands stately and still. Remnants of its grandeur flutter through unglazed window cavities. Downspouts and electrical wires hang lifelessly from cracking eaves. Paint scales, peels and lays bare the stonework and masonry of decades ago’s craftsmen. Landscape overgrows, proliferates and dies.
Life’s cycle.
An imperceptible squall kicks up from the west as a storm of European starlings – not native to this portion of California – flush themselves from an upper reach.
Swiftly, they form a disorganized cloud, mindlessly turning and twisting.
In a heartbeat, the black, beating swirl disappears through a vacant upstairs window into the house next door.
© 2009
Church of the Open Road Press
Ain't it amazing about what happens to the things we just have to have today, tomorrow?
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