Epistle. To Bernadette Wild Garden

Cool damp morning where the trees look heavy from all the rain. Are we in that place once again? Where it's another time, another time between storms where the norm becomes looking elsewhere? Trimmed the roses yesterday in a rare moment of sunlight. They way they looked they needed to have all that dead material lost, the brown canes sucking energy and not giving anything in return. And not much in the way of rebellion from the wound. Perhaps I should name it and give it a personality? But on second thought I don't think so. And it's odd, not to hear anything electronic not mechanized. No cars on the street and no planes in the sky or any land lines exploding in open windows. Only the birds calling back and forth like sounds in the woods. No human voices either. It's like a science fiction quiet, where at first you don't realize what's happening. But then as the quiet settles in.  And you find everything else on the human side has gone and you're alone, in what a script maker has decided this sounds like the end of the world with just you listening. And on cue a fog settles in among the trees. Then to disprove theory a truck rattles over on Caroline Street. Ah, too much introspection brings back the rain! Soon there will be a mad rush as ten thousand soccer parents look for parking in the neighborhood like a bunch of mantis in SUV's. Today is supposed to be part cloudy. Tomorrow is supposed to be part sunny. Where's the line? Should you plan on something if it's going to be a part sunny day? And should you just give it up and forget about it on what should be it's opposite the part cloudy day? And I had this coupon. It was worth some much off per gallon of gas and up to twenty gallons. Having things like that can spur you to action. But no one explained I had to pay inside the store. I swiped a card like everybody else and paid outside. There's nothing I can do a woman said. I told her no one told me I had to pay inside. She looked at me like a zombie and began eating a sandwich from a plastic bag hot out of the microwave while she was selling lottery tickets and a bottles of Sprite to other customers pushing me aside. And it sounded so feeble - and  this was it - no one told me I had to pay inside. Now I have a full tank in the truck and an unused unfulfilled coupon due to expire next week. And since I'm not driving a lot these days there is no way this side of Hades-town I will go through that full tank in time. In time to get back that due from the coupon. But maybe I should get enterprising. Maybe try and sell that coupon at like half price to a soccer parent. If you need to park so far away from the field and go bitch and balls about it - like half a block! - then whoa I can make this trip partially worth you're while! But I never do those things. Maybe there's an authority to petition. Hey fuck this I've been sandbagged! But I imagine you should be smart in situations like these. And as ever it's situations like these that leave me baffled until they are explained more better in full. Maybe it was just a bad day for coupons. Maybe I'll drive around all day and drink up that gasoline. Then start over and go to a different store and truly be able to use that coupon because now I know you need to pay on the inside. Thunder up in the heavens. Banging across the forecast. For sure I'm going to plan on nothing.