Brittle Bones

It begins with a pollen-yellow haze, like dry fog, dusting the air, and pine needles dancing in the breeze like tiny harbingers of nature’s wrath.

My fingers, so swollen that holding this pen burns them from the inside out, do not care for this time of year, when the Santa Anas’ shout their fury with a cacophony of destruction.

Brittle bones, brittle bones, can you withstand the tempest?

The palm trees totter, their tether to the hillsides somewhat tenuous, but also tested by time.

Poor Carlotta, the grande dame of our spider realm, will have to start all over again.

Her creation, once vaulting from the eave of the house to the back of a garden chair, now hangs in errant ribbons of silk blowing here and there in the wind, catching bits of debris.

And Carlotta is nowhere to be seen.

Emerson, my ebony puff of feline fluff, feels staticy.

Outside, today? No, he’s here with me, nestled in his kitty cup.

From fifty feet up, the palm fronds crack and are wrested free to plummet through the tree canopy, taking out a bird feeder along the way.

Tattered Dahlias and wind-whipped ferns bear testimony to the wind’s ferocity.

Oh, these fingers burn.

Like my battered garden, they too have seen better days.

Brittle bones, brittle bones, are always more painful when the Santa Ana winds play, like the gods, with humanity.

Erika Burkhalter 2019

Erika Burkhalter is a yogi, cat-mom, photographer, and lover of travel and nature, spreading her love and amazement for Mother Earth’s glories, one photo, poem or story at a time. (MS Neuropsychology, MA Yoga Studies).

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Photos and story ©Erika Burkhalter. All rights reserved.